The former head of NHTSA has condemned Cruise's ad labelling people as terrible drivers
Former head of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Joan Claybrook has reacted to a Cruise advert that labelled people as terrible drivers.
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Cruise's ad points to nearly 43,000 traffic fatalities in 2022, calling unmanned cars the solution.
"Using the pain and suffering of those deaths for self-promotion of an unproven and unsafe product is unscrupulous," Claybrook said.
She called the ads a ploy by GM to recoup some of the investment of billions of dollars spent on developing Cruise self-driving cars.
Cruise is a subsidiary of automaker General Motors. According to the company's 2022 earnings report, GM will spend $1.9 billion on drone development, $700 million more than a year earlier.
The carmaker also expects Cruise to generate $50bn a year by 2030.
Joan Claybrook headed the NHTSA from 1977 to 1981. She served as president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen from 1982 to 2009.
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Source: TechCrunch
