Cruise collides with firetruck on an emergency call
Incident
On August 17th, 2023 at just past 10pm a Cruise robotaxi named “Novel” autonomously drove into the intersection of Polk and Turk streets and collided with a firetruck on an emergency call with its siren and lights on. The Cruise had a passenger, who was transported to a hospital. The car suffered significant damage and had to be removed via a tow truck.
It is noteworthy that this incident occurred just one week after the August 10th California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) vote that allowed Cruise to take paying passengers citywide. It also occurred just a day after San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu formally asked the CPUC to pause Cruise and Waymo’s imminent expansion in The City. It also caused the California DMV to ask Cruise the next day to reduce its fleet of robotaxis by half until safety issues were resolved, and Cruise complied.
Information from news reports
Additional relevant information about the incident was provided by various news sources including:
Police also said that the fire engine involved was operating in a “’Code 3’” emergency mode,” meaning that the fire engine’s lights, including a forward-facing steady red light and siren, were activated.
SF Standard article
In a video posted to social media showing the aftermath of the crash, an emergency official said the person was “complaining of a headache.” Cruise told The Examiner the passenger was walking around and speaking with first responders for “some time” before being transported to the hospital.
SF Examiner article
One of the firefighters involved in the accident told police what he claims the Cruise vehicle did at the intersection.
He says: “It looked like it lurched.”
ABC7 News
News report from ABC7 News shows a situation the next day where a firetruck goes through the same intersection against the direction of the traffic lane, which is apparently a common occurrence. Even more notable in the video is a Cruise vehicle going the other direction which does not stop as legally required until after it is passed by the firetruck.
Photos and videos
Vehicle Code
CA Vehicle Code Section 21806
Upon the immediate approach of an authorized emergency vehicle which is sounding a siren and which has at least one lighted lamp exhibiting red light that is visible, under normal atmospheric conditions, from a distance of 1,000 feet to the front of the vehicle, the surrounding traffic shall, except as otherwise directed by a traffic officer, do the following:
(a)(1) Except as required under paragraph (2), the driver of every other vehicle shall yield the right-of-way and shall immediately drive to the right-hand edge or curb of the highway, clear of any intersection, and thereupon shall stop and remain stopped until the authorized emergency vehicle has passed.
(2) A person driving a vehicle in an exclusive or preferential use lane shall exit that lane immediately upon determining that the exit can be accomplished with reasonable safety.
(b) The operator of every street car shall immediately stop the street car, clear of any intersection, and remain stopped until the authorized emergency vehicle has passed.
(c) All pedestrians upon the highway shall proceed to the nearest curb or place of safety and remain there until the authorized emergency vehicle has passed.
FindLaw.com – California Code, Vehicle Code – VEH § 21806
Note that there is no ambiguity or exception for this incident. Vehicles must pull over and stop, and they must be clear of any intersection.
Commentary on Legal Code by a law firm
There are five important points to know about this code section.
Vehicle Code 21806 VC – Failure to Yield to an Emergency Vehicle
- A proper yield under this section is when a driver slows and drives to the right-hand edge of the road. Drivers must remain stopped until the emergency vehicle passes.
- A driver that does not yield must pay a fine of $490.00.
- A driver that violates this section will also receive one point on his DMV driving record. A driver risks getting a negligent operator license suspension if he gets 4 points in 12 months, 6 points in 24 months or 8 points in 36 months.
Note again that vehicles must stop. And the fine for drivers is quite steep (though of course robotaxis cannot be given a moving violation since that can only go to the “driver”)
Details provided by Cruise
The next day Cruise created a blog post describing the incident in more detail.
The blog post the Tweet referred to stated the following:
While our investigation is ongoing and we remain in contact with city officials and regulators, we wanted to provide an update on our preliminary analysis on the incident involving an emergency vehicle colliding with a Cruise AV.
First and foremost, our primary concern remains with our passenger and their well-being. We have been in contact to offer support and will remain in touch.
In terms of what occurred around the scene of the collision there are many aspects that looked typical from the AV’s perspective and several factors that added complexity to this specific incident.
The AV positively identified the emergency vehicle almost immediately as it came into view, which is consistent with our underlying safety design and expectation. It is worth noting, however, that the confines of this specific intersection make visual identification more challenging – for humans and AVs alike – as it is significantly occluded by buildings, meaning that it is not possible to see objects around the corner until they are physically very close to the intersection.
The AV’s ability to successfully chart the emergency vehicle’s path was complicated by the fact that the emergency vehicle was in the oncoming lane of traffic, which it had moved into to bypass the red light.
Cruise AVs have the ability to detect emergency sirens, which increase their ability to operate safely around emergency vehicles and accompanying scenes. In this instance, the AV identified the siren as soon as it was distinguishable from the background noise.
The Cruise AV did identify the risk of a collision and initiated a braking maneuver, reducing its speed, but was ultimately unable to avoid the collision.
During the course of more than 3 million miles of fully autonomous driving in San Francisco we’ve seen an enormous number of emergency vehicles – more than 168,000 interactions just in the first 7 months of this year alone. Our first responders are trying to balance keeping all of us safe while quickly responding to emergency scenes and we’re grateful for their work and dedication.
We realize that we’ll always encounter challenging situations, which is why continuous improvement is central to our work. We will continue to work in partnership with regulators and city departments on EMV interactions to reduce the likelihood of incidents like these happening again.
Cruise Blog Post – Further update on emergency vehicle collision by Greg Dietrerich
Cruise report filed with DMV (none filed!)
The DMV Autonomous Vehicle Collision Reports does not contain a report for this crash. While Waymo continued to report crashes to the California DMV, the safety regulator for robotaxis in California, it appears that Cruise simply stopped sending such reports for approximately 6 weeks, until 9/27/2023. There was a vagueness in the DMV reporting requirements that Cruise decided to take advantage of. Incidents only needed to be reported if a robotaxi system was in “test mode”. Cruise claimed that since the CPUC and the DMV had fully approved their system that they were no longer in “test mode” and therefore no longer needed to report crashes. This lack of reporting and transparency was of course considered very problematic by SF city officials.
The Untruths by Cruise
The analysis provided by Cruise is unacceptable. Instead of acknowledging and addressing the actual problem, that their vehicle entered the intersection while the firetruck had its sirens on, they repeatedly sidestepped the issue. Their prevarication means that they cannot be trusted to actually fix the problem since they didn’t even admit to it.
It is not a matter of it being a “challenging” situation. It is not a matter of “visual identification“ given that a audible siren alone means the vehicles must stop. It is not a matter of being “occluded by buildings” since intersections in cities typically have visual barriers. It is not relevant that “The AV positively identified the emergency vehicle almost immediately as it came into view” since the firetruck needed to be identified by the sound of a siren alone. It doesn’t matter that is was complicated to “successfully chart the emergency vehicle’s path” since the Cruise vehicle should have stopped in the first place. And lastly, it doesn’t matter that the Cruise vehicle “did identify the risk of a collision and initiated a braking maneuver” since it should never have gotten to that point in the first place.
And Cruise never explained why they allowed this problem to occur in the first place. It is not a question of how they will fix the problem. Instead it is a question of how their processes could allow such a dangerous disregard to emergency vehicles to be released onto our streets.
Conclusions
There is absolutely no ambiguity. According to the California Vehicle Code 21806, the Cruise vehicle should have detected the audible siren early enough and come to a complete stop before the intersection that the firetruck was going through. Not doing so endangered the passenger, the firefighters, and the people who the firefighters were responding to. It is also clear that this was not a one time situation. The video from ABC7 News shows that Cruise vehicles simply do not stop as they are required to do when encountering an emergency vehicle with sirens and lights on.
