Cruise AVs hit the road in Houston with drivers, initially

(TNS) — With the recent announcement that cruisers were returning to Dallas roads, it was only a matter of time before the self-driving ride-hailing company resumed operations in Houston. The General Motors-owned autonomous ride-hailing company announced Tuesday that it will return to the Bayou City to operate “human-driven” vehicles, before moving into autonomous rides.

“Houston, we missed you! Today we return to driving in Houston where we will build on the knowledge collected last year. We will start with human-driven vehicles and move to supervised autonomous driving with a driver from driving safety in the coming weeks, driven by safety,” the company wrote on X.

A Cruise representative said Chronicle that the company would restart operations in Houston on Tuesday with three manually operated vehicles. Cruise will transition to autonomous driving with a driver present in the coming weeks. “No specific timeline to share at this time,” spokeswoman Tiffany Testo said.

On a related note, the company restarted operations in Dallas last week, starting with human-driven test drives before moving to autonomous ridesharing. “We are excited to start driving in Dallas as we continue to validate our autonomous driving technology against our rigorous safety and performance standards,” Cruise wrote in a post on X.

The company declined to say whether it would decide to restart operations in other Texas cities outside of Dallas and Houston.

Cruise’s Texas relaunch comes after the company recalled its fleet of 950 autonomous vehicles (AVs) in several U.S. cities following an October incident in which a cruise vehicle struck and dragged a pedestrian in California. The company, which had an uneven and short-lived stint in Dallas, Houston and Austin last year before closing its doors, resumed driving tests on public roads in Arizona in April. Houston will be its third test city, as the company attempts to “rebuild trust.”

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