April 9 (Reuters) - General Motors' ( GM ) Cruise will

resume operations in the United States with a small fleet of

human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona, about six months

after the self-driving car unit paused operations following an

incident in San Francisco.

"Cruise is resuming manual driving to create maps and gather

road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix. This

work is done using human-driven vehicles without autonomous

systems engaged," the company said in a blog post.

The company had suspended its U.S. operations last October

after a pedestrian in San Francisco hit by another car was

dragged by one of its robotaxis.

After the incident, Cruise's permit to operate in California

was suspended and the National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration issued a recall of its vehicles.

Cruise said the move to resume human-driven cars was key to

validate its self-driving systems in its path to return to

driverless operations, adding that it plans to expand this

effort to other cities.

Its rival and Alphabet's self-driving startup

Waymo has been operating and expanding services in Phoenix for

several years and recently began offering driverless rides on

freeways in the Arizona city.

Waymo has also partnered with ride-hailing platform Uber

Technologies ( UBER ) to provide the city's residents with

autonomous, electric rides with no human driver behind the

wheel.

Under Cruise's former CEO Kyle Vogt, company officials had

said their decision to focus on San Francisco would deliver a

more robust autonomous vehicle technology than developing

software on the broad boulevards of a city like Phoenix.

Cruise said during the operational pause over the last few

months, it has been conducting extensive tests in complex

environments and on closed courses to ensure continuous

retraining and improvement.