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SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

110 points by georgecmu 3y ago

reed1234 3y ago
While it’s bad that the ambulance was blocked for 90 seconds, the title makes it seem like the person died because the ambulance was blocked- which is uncertain.
- coding123 3y ago
  Title says after not because...
  - zootboy 3y ago
    That feels like trying to get by on a technicality. The casual reader would reasonably interpret "after" to imply some causation the way this headline is written.
    - halfcat 3y ago
      Yes. Financial articles do the same with “as”. “Tech stocks down as trade talks stall with China” They’re rarely related. Two things happened, and they put “as” between them.
  - YuukiRey 3y ago
    I’m not a linguist but this use of after seems to at least imply a link. Strictly speaking it’s only the temporal relation of two facts but I’d reckon that a lot of people will read this after in the sense of because.
    - samtho 3y ago
      Most journalism tip-toes around this line by declining to assert direct cause. They use terms like “after” instead of “because” as it specifically does not imply a link, only the order in which two events (possibly related) occurred. Others you might see, “experts say” and “possible link”. I’m not commenting on the ethical implications of this usage, only the specific mechanisms they use to avoid assigning cause in the event that they end up wrong.
    - pests 3y ago
      I agree. The intent is the link them together. "Man dies after brushing teeth in morning." <- Might be true, but completely useless and irrelevant.
      - coding123 3y ago
        Isn't there a link between the taxi and the ambulance person?
    - Rapzid 3y ago
      Yeah when was this, Augh 14th? > 160k People Die in USA After Cruise Robotaxi...
      - hereforthecake2 3y ago
        Someone died. Stop and think about that for a bit and tone down the stupid "but logic!" BS. Recognize that we don't know exactly what happened and it's worth digging into. This is a great time to practice empathy instead of stroking your ego.
  - fuelfive 3y ago
    By this logic, the title would be equally correct if they wrote "Jimmy Buffet Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance"
    - robswc 3y ago
      Exactly. Everyone knows exactly why it was worded like that and I don't understand why anyone would even pretend to play dumb.
      - beardedwizard 3y ago
        This. The article is a hit piece. The more you know the more you see media bias. Pamela Price is another media favorite in the Bay Area.
    - coding123 3y ago
      Was Jimmy Buffet anywhere near this taxi? Was this person in SF anywhere near this taxi?
  - vidanay 3y ago
    "Man dies after being shot in the head." The causation/correlation is strong in that type of sentence.
- mlyle 3y ago
  Note that the ambulance was not impeded for 90 seconds; 90 seconds elapsed from the patient being put on the stretcher to the ambulance leaving the scene.
smugma 3y ago
I think SFFD is rightfully worried about robotaxis but this doesn’t seem to be the case. When cameras are recording everything, you can’t just make up facts. “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. Instead, responders moved a firetruck to allow the ambulance to pass on the left. The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly, indicates that 90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene.”
- capableweb 3y ago
  > “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. Instead, responders moved a firetruck to allow the ambulance to pass on the left. The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly, indicates that 90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene.” Why isn't the video shared if it proves they're innocent? Smells strange.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    if you have video of somebody being put on a stretcher before they died, it's best not to share that too widely. for legal reasons as well as just general humanity.
    - bink 3y ago
      They don't need to publish it on a website. They could release it to the local news orgs that handle this type of video daily. It's not hard to blur things that would be offensive.
      - minwcnt5 3y ago
        Isn't that exactly what they've done? Forbes, NBC, KRON4, SFStandard, and probably other news orgs have all reviewed the video.
Tempest1981 3y ago
A few more comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366823
sshine 3y ago
Until further investigated, this is FUD.
- statop 3y ago
  It isn't FUD, it's dumb autonomous vehicles won't get out of the way. Just force them to allow human intervention, a person gets in and moves it. What's the big deal? It shouldn't even be restricted to emergency personnel. If people steal them Cruise can file charges and consider it an expense of doing business.
  - pests 3y ago
    I'm bearish on self driving usually but this seems blown out of porportions. 1) I don't think it was in the way. A lane was open to the right lane but it waited 90s for a firetruck to move in the left lane before it continued on. 2) If I am paying for a ride in a Cruise and some random person hops in the front seat to "relocate" the car because it is inconviencing them - I will not be happy. Safety issue, etc. 3) We don't know if the patient would have died anyways. It was only a 90 second delay. 4) "after" in the title is being used as temporally after. There were a lot of things that happened before you could attribute to the cause of death - signaling out this one is sensationalist.
    - statop 3y ago
      2) sure.. and you won't be happy if someone carjacks your uber either I imagine? get out of the car.
      - pests 3y ago
        What kind of question is that? Of course I wouldn't be happy. Would you? What does me getting out of the car have to do with anything?
        statop 3y ago
        Your stated argument against allowing human control of the vehicle is that it presents a safety issue, implying that you could be car jacked. You could be car jacked while riding in a taxi/lyft/uber/etc. It’s unclear why you think this any different.
01100011 3y ago
Title seems misleading and Cruise doesn't seem to be responsible for the death, but I have to think that Cruise needs a better system for responding to emergencies like this. Do they have remote operators who can assume control of vehicles when the vehicles are confused or become immobile? What is their maximum response time? Is there a mechanism for people near the vehicle to signal Cruise for assistance, like an external button or even a QR code/phone number to report issues?
- living_room_pc 3y ago
  > Title seems misleading and Cruise doesn't seem to be responsible for the death I hate click-bate titles just as much as the next guy, but in this case it is warranted. The article said the injured was in critical condition. In general getting this person to proper care in Hospital _faster_ could have had a better outcome. Regardless, I don't think Cruise is roadworthy until they are able to clear the way for EMS. Maybe the cars don't need to be manually overridden in such case, at least initially, but even if they can maneuver to the side of the road that would be enough.
yieldcrv 3y ago
Reads like a robo ambulance would have figured out what to do better than the human driver here. Since everyone else figured out how to drive around in a completely unimpeded lane to the right.
- bitsage 3y ago
  Maybe the robo ambulance would have froze like the Cruise.
Eisenstein 3y ago
The current talking point regarding safety of autonomous vehicles as compared to human driven ones is a red herring. The question we should be asking is if we should be investing so many resources into cementing reliance on cars. It is super convenient to jump in an automated taxi and get driven to your destination -- but we all know that people in aggregate pick convenience overwhelmingly even when the inconvenient choices are objectively better. Is it good to build fleets of multi-ton individual person movers that still require an enormous amount of infrastructure and energy, and make cities worse for everyone not in a car at any moment? Regardless of human vs ai, roads are a lot safer with fewer cars on them.
jesprenj 3y ago
Is the mentioned video public?
- __s 3y ago
  No
38 3y ago
"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 ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do." Cruise seems to be ignorant of the law here. the law is: YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY of emergency vehicles, period. unless you are "landlocked" by other cars, you get the fuck out of the way, so that they can do their job. it is not acceptable to say "well the other lanes were clear, so its the ambulance fault. most human drivers instinctively know this.
- pests 3y ago
  I was taught to allow the ambulance to manuever and do what it needs to do. It will drive the wrong direction down a road, hop onto curbs, drive on sidewalks, etc. They have trainining and experience in this type of driving. It sounds like moving to the other lane would have just blocked another ambulance. What is the procedure here?
  - joshribakoff 3y ago
    What part of “pull over to the right” is hard to understand or ambiguous for you? Thats my understanding of the law.
    - pseudo0 3y ago
      That's how it is supposed to work in theory, in reality emergency vehicles will use whatever lane has open space. If that happens to be the middle lane or right lane, or sometimes even the shoulder, they will go there. Eg. Let's say you have a three lane highway with a block of cars cruising in the middle lane and one car slowly passing in the left lane, with the right lane clear. An emergency vehicle rapidly approaching sees this and moves to the clear right lane. Technically you are supposed to move right to allow them to pass on the left, but they are already passing on the right, so moving over would impede them.
    - pests 3y ago
      If the ambulance is in the right lane - do I still pull over in front of them? Every lane is blocked besides the right lane - do I block it or line up behind another car already at the light? The real world isn't so black and white.
diebeforei485 3y ago
Cruise should release the video, at least release to the media if not publicly.
- minwcnt5 3y ago
  They have released it to several media outlets. It sounds like SFFD lied, or to be more charitable, the report was based on eyewitness testimony which is notoriously unreliable.
paul7986 3y ago
Shocker and I'm not seeing any such issues with Waymo cars and or am I missing those headlines? Waymo has been at this game and working on their tech since around 2007. Cruise definitely not as long ... no robo AI car company should be allowed on roads until they have proven themselves like Waymo has .. it's irresponsible and proving deadly like Uber's rush to do the same. Start-up bros killing it yet in this instance actually killing people... ridiculous ... no scruples/morals!
- joshribakoff 3y ago
  As a driver in SF ive been stuck behind Waymo cars even as construction workers waved them to go with exaggerated hand motions. Was stuck for several minutes before hazard lights turned on and then shortly later it moved, i assume a remote human assistant got involved. Same with zoox, they have delayed me commuting to work. I want them banned/put back safety drivers
annexrichmond 3y ago
We can argue all day about whether Cruise was in the wrong here, but the fact is, with autonomous cars becoming more common, this kind of situation is going to happen - an autonomous car blocking a vehicle in an emergency - and protocols/regulations need to be in place for handling these situations.
- macinjosh 3y ago
  It is not a fact we have to allow these corporate experiments on the roads with our sons and daughters.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Like with most things autonomous cars my question would be what is the over/under on how autonomous cars compare to the human population because I see Human drivers blocking emergency vehicles all the time... So the question is not, imo, if autonomous cars will be perfect, all the time. But if they are better than human drivers.
  - jinkiesScoob 3y ago
    How about instead of thinking about it from a statistical perspective we think of it from a liability one. A human driver has direct liability for the motor vehicle they operate. Meanwhile Cruise is a social construct literally designed to avoid liability. If a human kills someone accidentally they are almost certain to apologize and be obviously distraught. Cruise will deny everything, never apologize. While that is technically valueless by your metric, in the real world that has a lot of intangible value for those involved.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      In what way are they not liable, or designed to avoid liability. >human kills someone accidentally they are almost certain to apologize and be obviously distraught you start out wanting to use reason, then quickly jump to an emotional argument. I really dont care if if they feel distraught or not, I really do not care if they apologize or not. I care if they are likely to be a danger to others in the future, I care if there is a pattern of dangerous behavior, and I care that they (to the extent possible) make the victims hole. None of which requires them to express remorse, or be "obviously distraught" nor should any that be different between human and automated drivers. For example new laws in TN and TX will require someone that kills a person while driving drunk to pay child support if the victim has a child. That concept could also easily be adopted to automated driving. We do not need special laws, special regulations, etc. Human drivers and automated drivers should be held to the same standard. the Same standard.
macinjosh 3y ago
I don't understand all the debate. The _law_ is that when an emergency vehicle is behind you, you pull over to the side and make as much room as you can in the center of the road. The vehicle did not move out of the way, the company should be penalized heavily, as would a human driver.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  The city should be penalized heavily for forcing people to be beta testers.
  - joshribakoff 3y ago
    The city has no regulatory authority, and unfortunately the DMV (a state entity) largely allows them to self regulate.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Sure. What's the penalty for a human driver in that situation? Is it having the SFFD lie to the press about the events and imply you caused somebody's death? If the story were "Cruise fined $5k for not yielding to an emergency vehicle quickly enough", I bet the tenor of the conversation would be totally different.
  - joshribakoff 3y ago
    A human likely wouldn’t sit there failing to move over with an ambulance honking and blaring its sirens so this hypothetical is ridiculous, and the media isn’t slandering them by reporting on the incident. No one knows “what would have happened” for certain, and the headline only implies the mere possibility of causation (for anyone literate who reads it)
  - macinjosh 3y ago
    5k might be a heavy penalty for a normal driver, tho their are rich folks in SF that would see that as a mere inconvenience for their PA. The penalty would need to materially impact the company and its operations.
aaomidi 3y ago
Honestly amazing that the city, and the people are fine being beta testers. Arguably the family here should be allowed to sue the city for forcing them to be beta testers tbh.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
robswc 3y ago
Maybe I'm naive but is there a reason why in an emergency situation where the car is stuck, control can't be given over to a remote driver? It seems like in 99% of these situations, the car just has to go forward a few feet or change lanes.
flandish 3y ago
Corp robotics aside - any of this kind of tech needs to 100% have the ability to get out of the way. By robotic control. Bu human control. Or by being pushed. 90 seconds before ambulance moves is not long at all. Quite fast actually. I’ve seen it be longer for things with an MOI that requires ambulance to landing zone for helicopter transport. With helis waiting. The people in this thread simping for the tech while armchair qb’ing the first responders really sadden me. I have, personally, smashed windows, popped cars into neutral, and pushed them out of the way. It happens. That’s what insurance is for. This new tech needs to prioritize getting the heck out of the way - for any and all emergency vehicles. Even in odd places, like when we have to drive on the wrong side of the road, or on a lawn, etc.
- joshribakoff 3y ago
  The only way this will happen (anytime soon) is if they put the safety drivers back in but they will never do that willingly because they have worked for a decade and invested billions to get to this point and it would be difficult to capitulate. There is simply no way to remotely assist reliably in the same way as being physically present (no network has 0 latency and 100% reliability). The AI likely cannot drive “perfectly” no matter how good it gets and neither can humans, but for the foreseeable future the AI will continue making entirely different type of mistakes than humans do.
  - flandish 3y ago
    For sure. Us FD (and some police) have what we call “knox box keys” - knox is a brand. They’re locked in the apparatus, and with a pin code or radio signal I can get them unlocked and then from there unlock a little box on a building. That contains the buildings master keys. Anyway - if apparatus contained corporate keys (fobs, fido, physical, whatever) that allow a FD member to drive the car - I can 100% see that being part of a scene SOP/G. Tell the probie “get the key, move that AV out of the way.” Or bull bars on my tanker will make it happen..
    - ebalit 3y ago
      Great insights. It should be the top comment IMO. That's the kind of field-tested perspectives that give HN its value.
gkoberger 3y ago
This is such a weird framing. The person (a pedestrian) died because a car driven by a human hit them. There was also a human-driven police car that was also blocking the ambulance. I don't think the Cruise made this situation better, but it was a human-driven car that caused the death. And as far as I could find, Cruise has never hit a human.
- falcolas 3y ago
  If you shoot a gun out your window and kill someone who jumped off the building, you are still on the hook for manslaughter. That is to say, Cruise is still on the hook, even if they didn’t hit the pedestrian in the first place.
  - halfcat 3y ago
    What if a brand new, human-driven taxi breaks down, blocking the ambulance? Is the taxi company on the hook?
    - tremon 3y ago
      Did the Cruise robotaxi have a mechanical malfunction? If not, can you try harder to come up with a more relevant whataboutism?
      - halfcat 3y ago
        No. Because it’s irrelevant how relevant it is. That’s the entire point. It could be a stalled car, or a fallen tree. People get overly concerned with blame attribution, and future prevention, when there is often no fault to begin with. It’s akin to starting a witch hunt after the bad harvest.
        statop 3y ago
        This comment is very selfawarewolves. I agree, people in this thread are overly concerned with blame attribution, but maybe it's not the group you think. SFFD is highlighting to people who live/work/visit SF that so called "AV" taxis are getting in their way. That they were able to move another vehicle to get the ambulance on its way is immaterial. They are saying that in a different set of circumstances where they can't, this car blocks the ambulance. That's the problem, that's the fault. Your comment sounds like throwing a ladder on the freeway, but you vigilantes better not stop traffic to clear it, no one has hit it. Yet.
perihelions 3y ago
- "blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle" I'm taking no "position" on either "side" of the debate, but I feel it's noteworthy that a *human-driven* car killed a pedestrian (seriously?) here, and that fact is utterly banal and completely unremarkable to the authors—and to us. AI cars are still highly flawed and kill people. Human-driven cars are highly flawed, probably more flawed, and kill way more people. This is sort of a trolley problem, and we suck at solving those. Because: incompetent killer humans are a diffuse force of nature; incompetent killer AI's are a centralized, attributable malefactor. We humans love identifiable malefactors, evildoers; love identifying and spotlighting and ostracizing them. It's a honed evolutionary trait. We've no atavistic instinct for the opposite, utilitarianism—for minimizing harm through "rational" (?) number-crunching, even where it conflicts with "obvious" (?) morality. Should we? Or is the other side of the trolley switch the correct one?
- threatofrain 3y ago
  On a tangent of trolley like moral dilemmas, people tend to feel there's a moral difference between throwing a bomb onto a person versus throwing a person onto a bomb.
- slg 3y ago
  This is an excellent point. There are two independent causes to this person's death. 1. A human driver grievously injured a pedestrian 2. An AI driver delayed medical care for the injured pedestrian That person is potentially still alive if 2 doesn't happen. They are certainly still alive if 1 doesn't happen. Therefore, 1 deserves more of the blame here. Considering these are two independent causes, we can still be upset that 2 happened and work to stop it from happening again. But we also shouldn't get so concerned with 2 that it causes us to increase the occurrences of 1 (e.g. by overzealously legislating away a future in which AI drivers are drastically safer than humans).
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    I disagree that 1 deserves more of the blame here—a blocked ambulance is blocked from attending to all medical emergencies, not just medical emergencies caused by (human-powered) car accidents. If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. And there's no telling that this won't happen again.
giantg2 3y ago
I'm a fan of the fire hose through the windows type of solution. In the way and not occupied? Firetruck beats car. Car company doesn't like the loss? Provide overrides to move it.
bee_rider 3y ago
The whole description is pretty confusing, I hope video is shared at some point so we can understand it a little better. I’m sure they (Cruise as well as the city) don’t want to dump it on the general public immediately for good reasons, but hopefully we’ll see it eventually. > 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.
- shepardrtc 3y ago
  > Why weren’t those people pulling over, like you are supposed to when you encounter an ambulance in a rush (presumably with sirens on)? Because they didn't care about the person in the ambulance.
- sergers 3y ago
  Yea seems a little weird. Here if a ambulance has lights and sirens on, it has right away in every direction (including going opposite of traffic), where everyone pulls over to the shoulder. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-and-cycling/road-safety-rules-and-consequences/slow-down-move-over https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-an... And if there are other first responders, which sounds like firefighters? They usually section off the area with either their vehicle. Sounds like this was multilane both directions, and noone cared there was a ambulance... Oh right it's san fran
foxes 3y ago
New title: “Two cars murder a pedestrian”
flandish 3y ago
Us FD (and some police) have what we call “knox box keys” - knox is a brand. They’re locked in the apparatus, and with a pin code or radio signal I can get them unlocked and then from there unlock a little box on a building. That contains the buildings master keys. Anyway - if apparatus contained corporate keys (fobs, fido, physical, whatever) that allow a FD member to drive the car - I can 100% see that being part of a scene SOP/G. Tell the probie “get the key, move that AV out of the way.” Or bull bars on my tanker will make it happen..
djohnston 3y ago
Quite strange, from the report it seems like traffic was moving smoothly in the adjacent lane, including another ambulance. Perhaps a robot ambulance would have handled the obstacle better than this human did? Perhaps the patient who was hit and killed by another human driver would have survived… ah but yes we need to get these AVs off the road before they kill more people!

110 points by georgecmu 3y ago

While it’s bad that the ambulance was blocked for 90 seconds, the title makes it seem like the person died because the ambulance was blocked- which is uncertain.

coding123 3y ago
Title says after not because...
- zootboy 3y ago
  That feels like trying to get by on a technicality. The casual reader would reasonably interpret "after" to imply some causation the way this headline is written.
  - halfcat 3y ago
    Yes. Financial articles do the same with “as”. “Tech stocks down as trade talks stall with China” They’re rarely related. Two things happened, and they put “as” between them.
- YuukiRey 3y ago
  I’m not a linguist but this use of after seems to at least imply a link. Strictly speaking it’s only the temporal relation of two facts but I’d reckon that a lot of people will read this after in the sense of because.
  - samtho 3y ago
    Most journalism tip-toes around this line by declining to assert direct cause. They use terms like “after” instead of “because” as it specifically does not imply a link, only the order in which two events (possibly related) occurred. Others you might see, “experts say” and “possible link”. I’m not commenting on the ethical implications of this usage, only the specific mechanisms they use to avoid assigning cause in the event that they end up wrong.
  - pests 3y ago
    I agree. The intent is the link them together. "Man dies after brushing teeth in morning." <- Might be true, but completely useless and irrelevant.
    - coding123 3y ago
      Isn't there a link between the taxi and the ambulance person?
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    Yeah when was this, Augh 14th? > 160k People Die in USA After Cruise Robotaxi...
    - hereforthecake2 3y ago
      Someone died. Stop and think about that for a bit and tone down the stupid "but logic!" BS. Recognize that we don't know exactly what happened and it's worth digging into. This is a great time to practice empathy instead of stroking your ego.
- fuelfive 3y ago
  By this logic, the title would be equally correct if they wrote "Jimmy Buffet Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance"
  - robswc 3y ago
    Exactly. Everyone knows exactly why it was worded like that and I don't understand why anyone would even pretend to play dumb.
    - beardedwizard 3y ago
      This. The article is a hit piece. The more you know the more you see media bias. Pamela Price is another media favorite in the Bay Area.
  - coding123 3y ago
    Was Jimmy Buffet anywhere near this taxi? Was this person in SF anywhere near this taxi?
- vidanay 3y ago
  "Man dies after being shot in the head." The causation/correlation is strong in that type of sentence.
mlyle 3y ago
Note that the ambulance was not impeded for 90 seconds; 90 seconds elapsed from the patient being put on the stretcher to the ambulance leaving the scene.

smugma 3y ago

I think SFFD is rightfully worried about robotaxis but this doesn’t seem to be the case. When cameras are recording everything, you can’t just make up facts. “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. Instead, responders moved a firetruck to allow the ambulance to pass on the left. The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly, indicates that 90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene.”

capableweb 3y ago
> “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. Instead, responders moved a firetruck to allow the ambulance to pass on the left. The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly, indicates that 90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene.” Why isn't the video shared if it proves they're innocent? Smells strange.
- notatoad 3y ago
  if you have video of somebody being put on a stretcher before they died, it's best not to share that too widely. for legal reasons as well as just general humanity.
  - bink 3y ago
    They don't need to publish it on a website. They could release it to the local news orgs that handle this type of video daily. It's not hard to blur things that would be offensive.
    - minwcnt5 3y ago
      Isn't that exactly what they've done? Forbes, NBC, KRON4, SFStandard, and probably other news orgs have all reviewed the video.

Tempest1981 3y ago

A few more comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366823

sshine 3y ago

Until further investigated, this is FUD.

statop 3y ago
It isn't FUD, it's dumb autonomous vehicles won't get out of the way. Just force them to allow human intervention, a person gets in and moves it. What's the big deal? It shouldn't even be restricted to emergency personnel. If people steal them Cruise can file charges and consider it an expense of doing business.
- pests 3y ago
  I'm bearish on self driving usually but this seems blown out of porportions. 1) I don't think it was in the way. A lane was open to the right lane but it waited 90s for a firetruck to move in the left lane before it continued on. 2) If I am paying for a ride in a Cruise and some random person hops in the front seat to "relocate" the car because it is inconviencing them - I will not be happy. Safety issue, etc. 3) We don't know if the patient would have died anyways. It was only a 90 second delay. 4) "after" in the title is being used as temporally after. There were a lot of things that happened before you could attribute to the cause of death - signaling out this one is sensationalist.
  - statop 3y ago
    2) sure.. and you won't be happy if someone carjacks your uber either I imagine? get out of the car.
    - pests 3y ago
      What kind of question is that? Of course I wouldn't be happy. Would you? What does me getting out of the car have to do with anything?
      - statop 3y ago
        Your stated argument against allowing human control of the vehicle is that it presents a safety issue, implying that you could be car jacked. You could be car jacked while riding in a taxi/lyft/uber/etc. It’s unclear why you think this any different.

01100011 3y ago

Title seems misleading and Cruise doesn't seem to be responsible for the death, but I have to think that Cruise needs a better system for responding to emergencies like this. Do they have remote operators who can assume control of vehicles when the vehicles are confused or become immobile? What is their maximum response time? Is there a mechanism for people near the vehicle to signal Cruise for assistance, like an external button or even a QR code/phone number to report issues?

living_room_pc 3y ago
> Title seems misleading and Cruise doesn't seem to be responsible for the death I hate click-bate titles just as much as the next guy, but in this case it is warranted. The article said the injured was in critical condition. In general getting this person to proper care in Hospital _faster_ could have had a better outcome. Regardless, I don't think Cruise is roadworthy until they are able to clear the way for EMS. Maybe the cars don't need to be manually overridden in such case, at least initially, but even if they can maneuver to the side of the road that would be enough.

yieldcrv 3y ago

Reads like a robo ambulance would have figured out what to do better than the human driver here. Since everyone else figured out how to drive around in a completely unimpeded lane to the right.

bitsage 3y ago
Maybe the robo ambulance would have froze like the Cruise.

Eisenstein 3y ago

The current talking point regarding safety of autonomous vehicles as compared to human driven ones is a red herring. The question we should be asking is if we should be investing so many resources into cementing reliance on cars. It is super convenient to jump in an automated taxi and get driven to your destination -- but we all know that people in aggregate pick convenience overwhelmingly even when the inconvenient choices are objectively better. Is it good to build fleets of multi-ton individual person movers that still require an enormous amount of infrastructure and energy, and make cities worse for everyone not in a car at any moment? Regardless of human vs ai, roads are a lot safer with fewer cars on them.

jesprenj 3y ago

Is the mentioned video public?

__s 3y ago
No

38 3y ago

"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 ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do." Cruise seems to be ignorant of the law here. the law is: YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY of emergency vehicles, period. unless you are "landlocked" by other cars, you get the fuck out of the way, so that they can do their job. it is not acceptable to say "well the other lanes were clear, so its the ambulance fault. most human drivers instinctively know this.

pests 3y ago
I was taught to allow the ambulance to manuever and do what it needs to do. It will drive the wrong direction down a road, hop onto curbs, drive on sidewalks, etc. They have trainining and experience in this type of driving. It sounds like moving to the other lane would have just blocked another ambulance. What is the procedure here?
- joshribakoff 3y ago
  What part of “pull over to the right” is hard to understand or ambiguous for you? Thats my understanding of the law.
  - pseudo0 3y ago
    That's how it is supposed to work in theory, in reality emergency vehicles will use whatever lane has open space. If that happens to be the middle lane or right lane, or sometimes even the shoulder, they will go there. Eg. Let's say you have a three lane highway with a block of cars cruising in the middle lane and one car slowly passing in the left lane, with the right lane clear. An emergency vehicle rapidly approaching sees this and moves to the clear right lane. Technically you are supposed to move right to allow them to pass on the left, but they are already passing on the right, so moving over would impede them.
  - pests 3y ago
    If the ambulance is in the right lane - do I still pull over in front of them? Every lane is blocked besides the right lane - do I block it or line up behind another car already at the light? The real world isn't so black and white.

diebeforei485 3y ago

Cruise should release the video, at least release to the media if not publicly.

minwcnt5 3y ago
They have released it to several media outlets. It sounds like SFFD lied, or to be more charitable, the report was based on eyewitness testimony which is notoriously unreliable.

paul7986 3y ago

Shocker and I'm not seeing any such issues with Waymo cars and or am I missing those headlines? Waymo has been at this game and working on their tech since around 2007. Cruise definitely not as long ... no robo AI car company should be allowed on roads until they have proven themselves like Waymo has .. it's irresponsible and proving deadly like Uber's rush to do the same. Start-up bros killing it yet in this instance actually killing people... ridiculous ... no scruples/morals!

joshribakoff 3y ago
As a driver in SF ive been stuck behind Waymo cars even as construction workers waved them to go with exaggerated hand motions. Was stuck for several minutes before hazard lights turned on and then shortly later it moved, i assume a remote human assistant got involved. Same with zoox, they have delayed me commuting to work. I want them banned/put back safety drivers

annexrichmond 3y ago

We can argue all day about whether Cruise was in the wrong here, but the fact is, with autonomous cars becoming more common, this kind of situation is going to happen - an autonomous car blocking a vehicle in an emergency - and protocols/regulations need to be in place for handling these situations.

macinjosh 3y ago
It is not a fact we have to allow these corporate experiments on the roads with our sons and daughters.
phpisthebest 3y ago
Like with most things autonomous cars my question would be what is the over/under on how autonomous cars compare to the human population because I see Human drivers blocking emergency vehicles all the time... So the question is not, imo, if autonomous cars will be perfect, all the time. But if they are better than human drivers.
- jinkiesScoob 3y ago
  How about instead of thinking about it from a statistical perspective we think of it from a liability one. A human driver has direct liability for the motor vehicle they operate. Meanwhile Cruise is a social construct literally designed to avoid liability. If a human kills someone accidentally they are almost certain to apologize and be obviously distraught. Cruise will deny everything, never apologize. While that is technically valueless by your metric, in the real world that has a lot of intangible value for those involved.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    In what way are they not liable, or designed to avoid liability. >human kills someone accidentally they are almost certain to apologize and be obviously distraught you start out wanting to use reason, then quickly jump to an emotional argument. I really dont care if if they feel distraught or not, I really do not care if they apologize or not. I care if they are likely to be a danger to others in the future, I care if there is a pattern of dangerous behavior, and I care that they (to the extent possible) make the victims hole. None of which requires them to express remorse, or be "obviously distraught" nor should any that be different between human and automated drivers. For example new laws in TN and TX will require someone that kills a person while driving drunk to pay child support if the victim has a child. That concept could also easily be adopted to automated driving. We do not need special laws, special regulations, etc. Human drivers and automated drivers should be held to the same standard. the Same standard.

macinjosh 3y ago

I don't understand all the debate. The _law_ is that when an emergency vehicle is behind you, you pull over to the side and make as much room as you can in the center of the road. The vehicle did not move out of the way, the company should be penalized heavily, as would a human driver.

aaomidi 3y ago
The city should be penalized heavily for forcing people to be beta testers.
- joshribakoff 3y ago
  The city has no regulatory authority, and unfortunately the DMV (a state entity) largely allows them to self regulate.
jsnell 3y ago
Sure. What's the penalty for a human driver in that situation? Is it having the SFFD lie to the press about the events and imply you caused somebody's death? If the story were "Cruise fined $5k for not yielding to an emergency vehicle quickly enough", I bet the tenor of the conversation would be totally different.
- joshribakoff 3y ago
  A human likely wouldn’t sit there failing to move over with an ambulance honking and blaring its sirens so this hypothetical is ridiculous, and the media isn’t slandering them by reporting on the incident. No one knows “what would have happened” for certain, and the headline only implies the mere possibility of causation (for anyone literate who reads it)
- macinjosh 3y ago
  5k might be a heavy penalty for a normal driver, tho their are rich folks in SF that would see that as a mere inconvenience for their PA. The penalty would need to materially impact the company and its operations.

aaomidi 3y ago

Honestly amazing that the city, and the people are fine being beta testers. Arguably the family here should be allowed to sue the city for forcing them to be beta testers tbh.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

robswc 3y ago

Maybe I'm naive but is there a reason why in an emergency situation where the car is stuck, control can't be given over to a remote driver? It seems like in 99% of these situations, the car just has to go forward a few feet or change lanes.

flandish 3y ago

Corp robotics aside - any of this kind of tech needs to 100% have the ability to get out of the way. By robotic control. Bu human control. Or by being pushed. 90 seconds before ambulance moves is not long at all. Quite fast actually. I’ve seen it be longer for things with an MOI that requires ambulance to landing zone for helicopter transport. With helis waiting. The people in this thread simping for the tech while armchair qb’ing the first responders really sadden me. I have, personally, smashed windows, popped cars into neutral, and pushed them out of the way. It happens. That’s what insurance is for. This new tech needs to prioritize getting the heck out of the way - for any and all emergency vehicles. Even in odd places, like when we have to drive on the wrong side of the road, or on a lawn, etc.

joshribakoff 3y ago
The only way this will happen (anytime soon) is if they put the safety drivers back in but they will never do that willingly because they have worked for a decade and invested billions to get to this point and it would be difficult to capitulate. There is simply no way to remotely assist reliably in the same way as being physically present (no network has 0 latency and 100% reliability). The AI likely cannot drive “perfectly” no matter how good it gets and neither can humans, but for the foreseeable future the AI will continue making entirely different type of mistakes than humans do.
- flandish 3y ago
  For sure. Us FD (and some police) have what we call “knox box keys” - knox is a brand. They’re locked in the apparatus, and with a pin code or radio signal I can get them unlocked and then from there unlock a little box on a building. That contains the buildings master keys. Anyway - if apparatus contained corporate keys (fobs, fido, physical, whatever) that allow a FD member to drive the car - I can 100% see that being part of a scene SOP/G. Tell the probie “get the key, move that AV out of the way.” Or bull bars on my tanker will make it happen..
  - ebalit 3y ago
    Great insights. It should be the top comment IMO. That's the kind of field-tested perspectives that give HN its value.

gkoberger 3y ago

This is such a weird framing. The person (a pedestrian) died because a car driven by a human hit them. There was also a human-driven police car that was also blocking the ambulance. I don't think the Cruise made this situation better, but it was a human-driven car that caused the death. And as far as I could find, Cruise has never hit a human.

falcolas 3y ago
If you shoot a gun out your window and kill someone who jumped off the building, you are still on the hook for manslaughter. That is to say, Cruise is still on the hook, even if they didn’t hit the pedestrian in the first place.
- halfcat 3y ago
  What if a brand new, human-driven taxi breaks down, blocking the ambulance? Is the taxi company on the hook?
  - tremon 3y ago
    Did the Cruise robotaxi have a mechanical malfunction? If not, can you try harder to come up with a more relevant whataboutism?
    - halfcat 3y ago
      No. Because it’s irrelevant how relevant it is. That’s the entire point. It could be a stalled car, or a fallen tree. People get overly concerned with blame attribution, and future prevention, when there is often no fault to begin with. It’s akin to starting a witch hunt after the bad harvest.
      - statop 3y ago
        This comment is very selfawarewolves. I agree, people in this thread are overly concerned with blame attribution, but maybe it's not the group you think. SFFD is highlighting to people who live/work/visit SF that so called "AV" taxis are getting in their way. That they were able to move another vehicle to get the ambulance on its way is immaterial. They are saying that in a different set of circumstances where they can't, this car blocks the ambulance. That's the problem, that's the fault. Your comment sounds like throwing a ladder on the freeway, but you vigilantes better not stop traffic to clear it, no one has hit it. Yet.

perihelions 3y ago

- "blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle" I'm taking no "position" on either "side" of the debate, but I feel it's noteworthy that a *human-driven* car killed a pedestrian (seriously?) here, and that fact is utterly banal and completely unremarkable to the authors—and to us. AI cars are still highly flawed and kill people. Human-driven cars are highly flawed, probably more flawed, and kill way more people. This is sort of a trolley problem, and we suck at solving those. Because: incompetent killer humans are a diffuse force of nature; incompetent killer AI's are a centralized, attributable malefactor. We humans love identifiable malefactors, evildoers; love identifying and spotlighting and ostracizing them. It's a honed evolutionary trait. We've no atavistic instinct for the opposite, utilitarianism—for minimizing harm through "rational" (?) number-crunching, even where it conflicts with "obvious" (?) morality. Should we? Or is the other side of the trolley switch the correct one?

threatofrain 3y ago
On a tangent of trolley like moral dilemmas, people tend to feel there's a moral difference between throwing a bomb onto a person versus throwing a person onto a bomb.
slg 3y ago
This is an excellent point. There are two independent causes to this person's death. 1. A human driver grievously injured a pedestrian 2. An AI driver delayed medical care for the injured pedestrian That person is potentially still alive if 2 doesn't happen. They are certainly still alive if 1 doesn't happen. Therefore, 1 deserves more of the blame here. Considering these are two independent causes, we can still be upset that 2 happened and work to stop it from happening again. But we also shouldn't get so concerned with 2 that it causes us to increase the occurrences of 1 (e.g. by overzealously legislating away a future in which AI drivers are drastically safer than humans).
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  I disagree that 1 deserves more of the blame here—a blocked ambulance is blocked from attending to all medical emergencies, not just medical emergencies caused by (human-powered) car accidents. If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. And there's no telling that this won't happen again.

giantg2 3y ago

I'm a fan of the fire hose through the windows type of solution. In the way and not occupied? Firetruck beats car. Car company doesn't like the loss? Provide overrides to move it.

bee_rider 3y ago

The whole description is pretty confusing, I hope video is shared at some point so we can understand it a little better. I’m sure they (Cruise as well as the city) don’t want to dump it on the general public immediately for good reasons, but hopefully we’ll see it eventually. > 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.

shepardrtc 3y ago
> Why weren’t those people pulling over, like you are supposed to when you encounter an ambulance in a rush (presumably with sirens on)? Because they didn't care about the person in the ambulance.
sergers 3y ago
Yea seems a little weird. Here if a ambulance has lights and sirens on, it has right away in every direction (including going opposite of traffic), where everyone pulls over to the shoulder. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-and-cycling/road-safety-rules-and-consequences/slow-down-move-over https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-an... And if there are other first responders, which sounds like firefighters? They usually section off the area with either their vehicle. Sounds like this was multilane both directions, and noone cared there was a ambulance... Oh right it's san fran

foxes 3y ago

New title: “Two cars murder a pedestrian”

flandish 3y ago

Us FD (and some police) have what we call “knox box keys” - knox is a brand. They’re locked in the apparatus, and with a pin code or radio signal I can get them unlocked and then from there unlock a little box on a building. That contains the buildings master keys. Anyway - if apparatus contained corporate keys (fobs, fido, physical, whatever) that allow a FD member to drive the car - I can 100% see that being part of a scene SOP/G. Tell the probie “get the key, move that AV out of the way.” Or bull bars on my tanker will make it happen..

djohnston 3y ago

Quite strange, from the report it seems like traffic was moving smoothly in the adjacent lane, including another ambulance. Perhaps a robot ambulance would have handled the obstacle better than this human did? Perhaps the patient who was hit and killed by another human driver would have survived… ah but yes we need to get these AVs off the road before they kill more people!