Stalled Self-Driving Car Appears To Block EMS From Reaching Mass Shooting Site [Update]

A drive-by shooting of a block party left nine people injured in San Francisco’s famed Mission District Friday night. While it was the human-driven car that caused the violence, a self-driving Cruise vehicle reportedly didn’t make things easier on first responders.

Updated Wednesday June 14 2:10 p.m. EST - San Francisco Police have provided this statement to Jalopnik:

“The SFPD is aware of the social media video showing an autonomous vehicle stopped in the middle of a road during a recent shooting incident in San Francisco. The autonomous vehicle did not delay police, fire, or other emergency personnel with our arrival or departure from this scene. Furthermore, it did not interfere with our investigation into the shooting incident.

SFPD officers have been given direction on how to conduct law enforcement operations specifically involving autonomous vehicles and official policy and procedures are in the final stages of implementation. Attached is SFPD Department Notice 22-079 which provides guidelines for officers interacting with autonomous vehicles. As noted in the document, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Department of Motor Vehicles have oversight of autonomous vehicles. Those two agencies are the best resources for further inquiries about legislation and laws governing autonomous vehicles and their continued operations.”

Video of an empty Cruise robotic taxi stalled in a street with a police officer shouting at it to move spread like wildfire on social media over the weekend. Posted by bicycle enthusiast and activist Paul Valdez, an officer can be heard shouting that the vehicle was blocking emergency medical and fire trucks from reaching the scene.

“It’s blocking emergency medical and fire. I’ve got to get it out of here now!” the police officer can be heard shouting in the video.

Cruise responded to the tweet with a thread of its own saying the vehicle didn’t actually block emergency vehicles. It reconfirmed its statement with Jalopnik Tuesday:

Even if the vehicle wasn’t completely blocking the road, that doesn’t mean that the situation wasn’t dangerous, or could be dangerous in the future.

We’ve reached out to the San Francisco Police Department for comment on the incident, and will update this post when we hear back.

This is far from the first time a confused self-driving taxi has gummed up the works in San Francisco around emergency vehicles. One officer attempted to pull over a Cruise vehicle for not having its lights on, only for it to bumble away. And it doesn’t take a suddenly closed road and flashing police lights to confuse Waymo and Cruise vehicles. Last year Cruise experienced a networking crash which stalled 60 of its vehicles where ever they happened to be driving at the time. Other cars with autonomous tech, like Teslas, also seem to have a hard time with emergency vehicles allegedly leading to fatal crashes.