The best thing about living on this glorious rock we call home is that technology is always expanding. It’s an ever-adapting organism, and sometimes, it upgrades life in subtle ways you’d never expect.
Some things take longer to replace, but big tech comes for us all. One of these classics was ‘getting hit by a bus to sue the city.’ Whenever you needed a quick buck, you could always step in front of a bus, twist an ankle, and rake in an easy six figurea.
As Adam Sandler taught us in Big Daddy, it’s all about restitutions.
That said, $800,000 isn’t what it once was, so without realizing it, GM’s self-driving arm Cruise has upped the ante. Fortune reports that the company paid out $8-$12 million USD (roughly $10.8-$16 million CAD) to a woman who was dragged and then pinned to the ground after a regular car hit her, and a passing Cruise robotaxi parked on top of her legs. Obviously, this isn’t as foolproof as the bus strategy I shared above, but as we work through the kinks of this tech boom, there are bound to be at least a few bugs.
Thankfully, since the accident last October, the GM CEO has cut $1 billion USD (roughly $1.3 billion CAD) from Cruise’s budget, and the company stopped testing for around five months after laying off 900 people. That said, Cruise self-driving cars are back on the roads in some states, but now with human drivers behind the wheel. I’m not sure why companies keep thinking this is safer. In 2018, a pedestrian was killed by a self-driving Uber, which had a driver behind the wheel who wasn’t paying attention. So, while a driver in the car could have moved the Cruise taxi in this case, it doesn’t seem like the perfect solution.
Having said that, what can you expect from a company that withholds evidence in a criminal trial and blames it on bad Wi-Fi. It’s not as bad as Boeing allegedly killing two people, but it’s not a great look, either.
Image credit: Cruise
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
