Self-driving Cruise cars return to roads — but not San Francisco’s

Cruise’s driverless cars are back on the roads — just not in San Francisco.

The embattled autonomous-vehicle company announced Monday that two of its robotaxis will operate in self-driving mode in Phoenix, but only with safety drivers behind the wheels. Eight others will continue to be driven manually, as has been the case for about a month.

The service will eventually “gradually expand” to include other Arizona cities as Cruise’s vehicles return to roads for the first time since a high-profile accident in The City last year set off a chain of events in which Cruise suspended its self-driving operations across the country.

A Cruise vehicle struck and dragged a San Francisco woman 20 feet in October. She was hospitalized for roughly four months before being released in January.

The collision led to a raft of investigations and penalties for Cruise, prompting the departure of founder Kyle Vogt and several top executives. General Motors, which owns Cruise, laid off around a quarter of its subsidiary’s employees in December.

Monday’s announcement marked the next phase in Cruise’s efforts to remake its image. The company said it has been steered by the findings of a lengthy report from an independent law firm which found its response to the Oct. 2 incident in San Francisco indicated “deficient leadership at the highest levels of the company.”

In February, Cruise hired its first safety officer , who noted one of his goals was earning trust with state regulators. The California Public Utilities Commission told The Examiner last month that Cruise started applying to reinstate its permits to operate in San Francisco and the rest of the state.

When asked whether Monday’s transition affects the Cruise’s standing in The City moving forward, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said “we don’t have anything to say about operations in Phoenix.”