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.
SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
71–80 of 166 posts
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#72I 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.
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.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#73The 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.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#74- "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 flawe…
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.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#75- "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 flawe…
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).
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#76"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 "landlocke…
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?
What part of “pull over to the right” is hard to understand or ambiguous for you? Thats my understanding of the law.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the safe default assumption is that if the ambulance driver didn't use the right lane, there was probably a good reason. Clearly the firetruck driver agreed with them. Maybe traffic was moving so quickly that they'd have to accelerate hard and risk hurting the patient, or they were concerned about getting rear-ended. Regardless, Cruise's vehicle clearly was at fault for not getting out of the way.
Drives me mad when there’s armchair bickering about “well you could have just done X.” Doesn’t matter. If there’s a law about getting out of the way, offering maximum space and choices to emergency vehicles, and you didn’t do that, you failed and you broke the law. One can definitely bicker about the details, but it doesn’t change anything about the fact that the vehicle failed to obey the law.
The fact that there was traffic flowing to the right seems to indicate that the scenario was such that people weren’t stopping and pulling over.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#78- "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 flawe…
Because why the person needed an ambulance is completely immaterial to whether the ambulance was impeded a self-driving vehicle or not.
It could have just as easily been a heart attack and the questions raised about self-driving vehicles would be no different.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the safe default assumption is that if the ambulance driver didn't use the right lane, there was probably a good reason. Clearly the firetruck driver agreed with them. Maybe traffic was moving so quickly that they'd have to accelerate hard and risk hurting the patient, or they were concerned about getting rear-ended. Regardless, Cruise's vehicle clearly was at fault for not getting out of the way.
Drives me mad when there’s armchair bickering about “well you could have just done X.” Doesn’t matter. If there’s a law about getting out of the way, offering maximum space and choices to emergency vehicles, and you didn’t do that, you failed and you broke the law. One can definitely bicker about the details, but it doesn’t change anything about the fact that the vehicle failed to obey the law.
> Doesn’t matter. If there’s a law about getting out of the way, offering maximum space and choices to emergency vehicles, and you didn’t do that, you failed and you broke the law.
Then we can talk about whether the vehicle operator failed to obey the law, but I think we're talking about something far more serious, which is whether Cruise indirectly killed a man.
In determining whether Cruise has moral responsibility over this death, it is then natural for citizens to look over the video footage and ask what's going on.
Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance
#80- "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 flawe…
Will Cruise be taking centralized responsibility for the issues here?
Will the person who caused the initial accident be held responsible?
I think it's very worthwhile to think of the overall improvements to safety while still acknowledging the arbitrage a corporation brings.