“Two stalled driverless taxis blocked an ambulance carrying a critically injured patient,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle, citing a paywalled report from Forbes. The delay “contributed to ‘poor patient outcome’ — the person died 20 to 30 minutes after reaching the hospital, according to a report by San Francisco firefighters that the taxi company disputes.”
The report was obtained by Forbes, which recently published a story detailing accounts by San Francisco firefighters who say driverless taxis have repeatedly interfered with their emergency response. However, Forbes also reported that Cruise provided a video that disputed SFFD’s account of the August 14 incident. The video, Forbes reported, shows that one Cruise car quickly left the scene while the other remained stalled at the intersection with an open lane to its right, which traffic was passing through. Forbes said it was not clear from the video if the ambulance could have navigated into the open lane.
Hannah Lindow, a Cruise spokesperson, told the Chronicle that the Cruise vehicle that stopped did so to yield to first responders directing traffic. “Throughout the entire duration the (autonomous vehicle) is stopped, traffic remains unblocked and flowing to the right of the AV. The ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do,” Lindow said in an email. “As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded from doing so by the AV.”
