A former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has responded to a full-page ad taken out in several major newspapers by Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary, that calls humans terrible drivers.
The ad points to the nearly 43,000 crash fatalities in 2022 and promotes autonomous vehicles as the solution.
“Using the pain and suffering of those deaths for self-promotion of an unproven and unsafe product is unscrupulous,” said Joan Claybrook, a lawyer who served as head of NHTSA from 1977 to 1981, and as president of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen from 1982 to 2009.
Claybrook called the ad a ploy from GM to recoup some of its investment in the billions of dollars spent to develop Cruise’s self-driving vehicles. According to GM’s 2022 earnings report, the automaker lost $1.9 billion on Cruise in 2022, up from $1.2 billion in 2021. GM has said it ex …
