> A stalled Cruise robotaxi blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle to the hospital in an Aug. 14 incident, according to first responder accounts.
> “The patient was packaged for transport with life-threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” the San Francisco Fire Department report, first reported by Forbes, reads.
> Video and other surveillance data gathered by Cruise and reviewed by The Standard showed three Cruise vehicles were present at the scene. Two left the scene but one remained stopped as an ambulance arrived behind it. Cars continued to pass in the lane to the right of the stopped Cruise car.
I’m wondering if The Standard just got a little video of the end of the interaction? The Fire Department seems to be complaining about a general issue with multiple Cruise vehicles slowing things down, while the paper is talking about one car that seems to have “stalled.” (is that a mechanical failure?)
> "Throughout the entire duration the AV is stopped, traffic remains unblocked and flowing to the right of the AV," a Cruise spokesperson said in a statement.
> The video captured by Cruise showed that the ambulance parked behind the Cruise and did not attempt to pass the robotaxi in the rightmost unblocked lane.
This seems a little weird, the ambulance is apparently in a rush but there’s also normal traffic flowing to the right of it? Why weren’t those people pulling over, like you are supposed to when you encounter an ambulance in a rush (presumably with sirens on)?
I’m not going to defend autonomous driving here, I think it is awful that these things have been allowed on our roads before they are 100% ironed out. But it would be nice to see the video before coming to too many conclusions.