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255

San Francisco Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance (sfstandard.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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 later died of their injuries.

“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. “The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable.”

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Unclear what to do with pitchfork:

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.

"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."

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.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Use it on the dumbass ambulance crew.

Full time software developer and part-time volunteer first responder here.

It sounds to my developer brain that the car was in “pull over for the emergency vehicle” mode and the presence of the ambulance with the flashy lights and woo woo noises basically stun-locked it so that it just sat there waiting for the ambulance to pass.

As for my first responder brain, In EVOC (emergency vehicle operations course), you’re taught that, when in emergency mode, you should TRY to pass on the left because that’s what people expect and you don’t want them doing unexpected things while you’re speeding, passing, and caring for a patient.

BUT… you’re also taught to use your goddamned brain, and the “pass on the left” thing is a guideline, not a rule. If traffic is stopped and you have a safe path, you take it.

This driver was being overly dogmatic about how they pass traffic, and their stubborn refusal to pass on the right contributed to the mortality of their patient.

However, “stupid” isn’t “criminal”, and there’s no way to say that the patient would have survived even if they had teleported to the hospital - emergency medicine is just a “do your best” situation, and bad outcomes happen. Tbh, though, it’s called “the golden hour”, not “the golden minute and a half”, and it’s pretty unlikely that 90 seconds would have made a huge difference in the outcome. On top of that, care doesn’t begin at the hospital. Care begins when the medic first begins assessing the patient. The medic will be working on stabilizing the patient in the back of the rig even while the driver sits there behind a stun-locked-npc car with his thumb up his ass.

So, if I were this crew’s chief or shift lieutenant, which I’m not, but if I were, I wouldn’t fire the driver, but they’d definitely get written up for it. I’d strip the driver of their driving privileges until they went back through EVOC again and wrote “I will be flexible in my operations and not be a dogmatic dipshit on an emergency scene.” 1000 times.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So the ambulance driver had the ability to get around and didn't? If that's the case then the ambulance driver has a serious problem (legal problem).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

We don't really know because "The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly"

"Just trust me, bro."

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (3 children)

If the video clears them, why decline to share it publicly?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"A Cruise spokesperson said the company offered to share video footage with San Francisco officials. As of Saturday morning, Cruise said, city officials had not reviewed the footage. It was unclear why."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

wtf

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

So the next time they have video that implicates them, they can say it's policy to not release video.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Privacy, also.

The last thing they want is people to realize these things are incredibly invasive to everyone’s privacy. (Including the people using them)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Such videos will be suppeaned by court and deleting them is a serious offense .

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

That doesn't necessitate them releasing it wilfully. They can sit on it until court ordered. Then the initial buzz has died from the story. Less likely to leave an impact.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It's ok, the company can afford the fee.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's very common for companies to lock their shit down if they get even a whiff of potential legal action, regardless of guilt.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly

Fuck this.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My guess is they've been advised by lawyers not to share the video. They're probably preparing for defending themselves from a wrongful death suit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

And they don't want the public to start thinking of self-driving cars as mobile, always-on surveillance machines. Not that that's necessarily the design, it's just hard to design a self-driving car not to capture vast amounts of footage from cameras mounted all over the car.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

Sorry. Not everything is intended for your entertainment.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Unclear what to do with pitchfork:

Use it on the human driver:

"a pedestrian hit by a vehicle"

We don't know if the self-driving cars might have delayed the ambulance. What we do know is that a human driver hit a pedestrian so hard that the pedestrian was killed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The question I see unanswered is whether the victim had survivability under any circumstances.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure that's an important question. In my view, even if it turned out correct, "This particular victim would have died anyway, so delaying emergency vehicles is fine" is a logical fallacy, an ethical error and a failure of empathy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Proximate cause is an important part of legal theory and extremely important in deontological ethics. You're way off base if you think it's not important.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You are clearly a Very Intelligent Expert and a Wise and Knowledgeable person, so I must bow to your greater, deeper and fuller understanding.

I was weak, pathetic and stupid for thinking that the safety concerns this raises were more important than the technicalities of this individual case. Please accept my humble apologies. I'm sure you'll have further corrections for my naive fumblings and I await your Academic Input eagerly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It's frankly incredible how many people pretend to miss the forest for the trees. Who do they think they're fooling? It's embarrassing lol.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ok.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ah and now you beat me in debate by writing a shorter answer without giving credibility to my main point by engaging with it in any way. You're such a winner.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Ok.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Very hard to tell if 90 seconds is life or death. Every second counts but if they made it to the ER with a minute and a half to spare I don’t know if they would have had enough time for meaningful intervention.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Also, the article had virtually no information on the actual incident. As far as I can see, the only information is: "a pedestrian hit by a vehicle". But, this is a case of a human driver causing such a serious injury to a pedestrian that the pedestrian died.

99.9% of the blame for the death of this pedestrian is due to the human driver who hit them. 0.1% of the blame is the self-driving cars which may (or may not) have delayed the ambulance slightly.

I understand why the focus of the article is the self-driving cars. But it is a tragedy how often human drivers kill pedestrians, cyclists, other drivers, etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I wonder if the ambulance was running lights and siren, and if the vehicles passing on the right tried to give way to the ambulance?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Evidence here show that ambulance - - could have and should have - - passed to the right.

Yet, the (hypothetical) question remains :
if to save a life I would (no doubt) gently push that stupid car out of the way. Wouldn't you ?

Edit : to @EdibleFriend

@EdibleFriend

Dear lemmy user,

Something went wrong in the other tread where you stated that pushing a light car with an ambulance could break the ambulance while I was of the opinion that since the ambulance is a truck and Heavy it would go right and anyway the driver of the ambulance should be able to judge if those vehicles reacts in the right way.
Maybe you want to continue our discussion about it ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure, and maybe next time they won't be able to go around. What then?

The fact that this could and probably will happen again and again is enough to make these cars entirely indefensible. The techbro cunts experimenting on the unconsenting public with this broken technology should be charged with vehicular manslaughter for every death caused by their driverless cars.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I agree that I did not address that important and bigger issue about robo taxi in general.

Even worse, ai poses great problems in other domains.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Because people driven cars never stall in bad spots.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fuck cars, regardless if driven by humans or robots.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

God I hate so much the technowizards who think all of our society problems around cars are going to be fixed by self-driving cars. My dad always does this -- any time you point out the issues with expense and congestion near him in the city downtown, he'll start talking about how any day now the self-driving cars will fix it and won't need to park and it'll be sunshine and roses.

Nope. The geometric problems of cars are not solved by fleets of vehicles that park in huge lots at the edge of town. It may mitigate issues, but it does not fix them.

Want to get rid of downtown congestion? Putting people in automated cars won't do it. Only getting rid of the cars will.

The only upside is it will make it that much easier to get rid of mandatory min parking rules which are totally unscientific and should never have been codified to law in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes and no. It will definitely fix some issues and create new ones. Would likely free up some space and be better overall for most.

Less cars is generally better. Plus I don't like driving. I get highly stressed and it ruins my day. Yet when someone else drives me I'm all good. So for me it's a win.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What's the "no" part of this? You don't seem to disagree with anything I said at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Good point.

I'm guessing there would be a whole host of new issues. Similar to this one. Broken down vehicles blocking access to areas. Parking in weird places.

Job loss from gig economy with Uber and such. Potentially an increase in cars if companies could have fleets of cars. An absolute shit tonne of bandwidth being required for all these cars. Software updates bricking cars. Some people enjoy driving so negative for them maybe. I'm sure there are plenty others. Won't know issues until roll out really happens. Pros and cons to most things unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Full disclosure, I have an older Tesla with only Auto Pilot (AP). I agree with the sentiment that autonomous vehicles won't lead to some congestion free utopia. I do however, think they would improve conditions for the people in them, and quite possibly diminish conditions for people still driving.

When driving with AP, I've found myself many times pacing behind a car going slower than I set my cruise for. It's much less mentally taxing and easier driving like that, lending to an overall better experience. That's similar to how I see autonomous vehicles being implemented. They might add to congestion and increase drive times, but the "driver" won't care. Unfortunately for those not in autonomous vehicles, this also increases their drive times.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

For what its worth, lower speeds are one of the most straightforwardly effective way to reduce congestion. Road capacity is higher at lower speeds. Errors are less likely to cause serious incidents at lower speeds. Traffic controls don't need to be so aggressive, causing you to spend less of your trip fully-stopped. For most trips, going a bit slower has a completely negligible effect on drive times, especially when you can get most of traffic to do it leading to more laminar flow.

The problem is, only road design is effective to lower speeds. You can't just ask drivers to slow down or change the posted signs, you have to re-engineer roads. People tend to just drive at whatever speed feels comfortable on the road.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

So you're saying robotaxis are no better than cars driven by people? Why not just let the people keep driving?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Google map of the intersection. An intersection of two one-way streets.

Original report

If my guesses are correct, the Cruise cars weren't programmed to expect an ambulance to want to go the wrong way down a one-way street.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What if there was any other vehicle stalled there? Wouldn't it have been the same situation?

Also would be great if we had dedicated zones for autonomous vehicles that are clear of any obstacles, confusion or situations that even a normal driver could get stuck in.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Or like some effective form of public transportation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

So… they should program it. Have a remote override for situations like this… something

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If I am reading this correctly, the headline should say 'ambulance driver leaves injured person to die because they refuse to pass standing AV'. Am I wrong?