- <i>"blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle"</i><p>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 <i>utterly banal and completely unremarkable</i> 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.<p>Because: incompetent killer humans are a diffuse force of nature; incompetent killer AI's are a centralized, attributable malefactor. We humans <i>love</i> 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?
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.<p>“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.”
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.<p>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.
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?
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.
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.
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.<p>> 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.<p>> “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.<p>> 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.<p>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?)<p>> "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.<p>> 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.<p>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)?<p>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.
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.<p>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?<p>Regardless of human vs ai, roads are a lot safer with fewer cars on them.
Shocker and I'm not seeing any such issues with Waymo cars and or am I missing those headlines?<p>Waymo has been at this game and working on their tech since around 2007.<p>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!
A few more comments here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358174">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358174</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366823">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366823</a>
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.
Corp robotics aside - any of this kind of tech needs to 100% have the ability to get out of the way.<p>By robotic control. Bu human control. Or by being pushed.<p>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.<p>The people in this thread simping for the tech while armchair qb’ing the first responders really sadden me.<p>I have, personally, smashed windows, popped cars into neutral, and pushed them out of the way. It happens. That’s what insurance is for.<p>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.
"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."<p>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.
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..
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.
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!
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.
Honestly amazing that the city, and the people are fine being beta testers.<p>Arguably the family here should be allowed to sue the city for forcing them to be beta testers tbh.
Reads like a robo ambulance would have figured out what to do better than the human driver here.<p>Since everyone else figured out how to drive around in a completely unimpeded lane to the right.