After a series of concerning incidents involving Cruise autonomous vehicles, the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued an order late Friday asking Cruise to reduce its fleet of AVs in San Francisco.

Almost immediately following two collisions on Thursday night, one of which resulted in a passenger injury, and one week after the California Public Utilities Commission voted to expand Cruise's permit along with Waymo's, the DMV announced that they had stepped in.

"Cruise has agreed to a 50% reduction and will have no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night," the DMV said in a statement. "The DMV reserves the right, following the investigation of the facts, to suspend or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there is determined to be an unreasonable risk to public safety."

The agency added, "Safety of the traveling public is the California DMV’s top priority. The primary focus of the DMV’s regulations is the safe operation of autonomous vehicles and safety of the public who share the road with these vehicles."

In the injury accident Thursday, a Cruise vehicle appears to have not recognized the need to yield to an oncoming fire engine — though that incident is being investigated, and Cruise's version of events is different. (Their version: "One of our cars entered the intersection on a green light and was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene.")

One female passenger who was in the robotaxi at the time reportedly suffered a head injury which Cruise deemed to be "non-severe."

In the second incident Thursday, a Cruise vehicle was struck by another vehicle traveling at high speed in the Mission District. Cruise claims that other vehicle ran a red light, but there seems to be some dispute there as well.

The DMV may also be responding to an incident last Friday night, the first night of Outside Lands, when Cruise said that "connectivity issues" had caused an entire group of their vehicles to stall and sit idle in the middle of a busy North Beach street. Cruise later said that human interference with one of the vehicles had set off the chain reaction.

The past week has been full of local politicians crying foul over the PUC's vote last week, with both the SF city attorney and Board of Supervisors vowing to take action however they could.

Regarding Thursday's injury crash, per the Chronicle, Supervisor Aaron Peskin called it "an accident waiting to happen," and he excoriated Cruise for its "highly inadequate" response.

"They should be expressing concern for San Francisco, San Franciscans and the passenger," Peskin said. "They are using our streets for their testing ground, you would hope they show a little more respect for our city."

City Attorney David Chiu filed a motion with the PUC Wednesday, asking them to reverse their decision.

The PUC's 3-1 vote, seen as a pivotal one for the autonomous vehicle industry and its ability to expand testing on SF's complicated city streets, came after several months of concerning incidents recorded by the SF Fire Department and others. As part of the vote, the PUC commissioners gave the green light for Waymo and Cruise to expand their fleets in SF without limits, and allowed both companies to begin taking paid passengers 24 hours a day.

Up until last week, Waymo had only been doing free rides on a limited basis with a closed list of beta testers, and Cruise had only been operating between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. in a northern swath of the city, taking paid passengers — though the cars were able to drive all over the city during the day without passengers.

Cruise put out a statement following the order from the DMV, saying, "Over one hundred people lose their lives every day on American roadways, and countless others are badly injured. We believe it’s clear that Cruise positively impacts overall road safety, and look forward to working with the CA DMV to make any improvements and provide any data they need to reinforce the safety and efficiency of our fleet."