A self-driving car owned by General Motors Corp, known as Cruise, is parked outside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Image Source: Heather Somerville | Reuters
Cruise, a prominent autonomous vehicle company, has refuted a claim made by the San Francisco Fire Department stating that one of their self-driving cars caused a delay for an ambulance following a fatal accident.
According to the fire department, on August 14, an individual was hit by a car at approximately 11 p.m. and emergency medical services encountered difficulty reaching the scene of the collision due to two Cruise taxis obstructing the road.
San Francisco Fire asserts that this obstruction resulted in a delay in transporting the pedestrian to the hospital, leading to their subsequent demise.
The department’s report stated, “This delay, no matter how brief, contributed to an unfavorable outcome for the patient. The continued blocking of access to critical 911 calls by Cruise’s autonomous vehicles is unacceptable.”
However, Cruise has contested this narrative. A company spokesperson has claimed that the videos from their autonomous vehicles present a different account of the incident.
“The first vehicle promptly cleared the area once the traffic light turned green, while the other vehicle stopped in the lane to yield to the first responders who were directing traffic,” the spokesperson explained in a statement. “Throughout the duration that the autonomous vehicle was stopped, traffic remained unobstructed and smoothly flowed around the vehicle. The ambulance, along with other vehicles, successfully passed the autonomous vehicle, which never hindered its path. As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, it immediately left the scene without any obstruction from the autonomous vehicle.”
Cruise declined to share the video footage as it is proprietary material.
Nevertheless, NBC Bay Area had the opportunity to review a nearly 13-minute video purportedly capturing the incident in question. The video seems to align with Cruise’s description, including the ambulance managing to pass through the stopped autonomous car.
Interestingly, this incident occurred just four days after the California Public Utilities Commission granted Cruise, as well as Waymo, another autonomous vehicle company, permission to operate their vehicles at all hours in San Francisco.
San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin has expressed criticism towards this decision and, although he cannot speak directly about the events on August 14, Peskin informed NBC Bay Area that there have been more than 70 recorded incidents of autonomous vehicles obstructing first responders.
“In these cases, every second and minute can be crucial in determining whether someone bleeds out or receives timely resuscitation during a heart attack or other emergency,” Peskin remarked. “It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when’.”
Peskin is advocating for increased regulations on the emerging autonomous vehicle industry and stated that the city plans to engage with legislators and leadership from the Department of Motor Vehicles later this month.
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