Woman Was Trapped Under Driverless Car After Accident in San Francisco

A Cruise self-driving car, which is owned by General Motors Co., is seen outside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Sept. 26, 2018. Heather Somerville/Reuters

A woman who was in an accident involving an autonomous vehicle (AV) in San Francisco ended up getting trapped under the car and was only rescued after first responders arrived at the site.

The woman was trapped under a driverless car operated by Cruise, a self-driving taxi company based in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The incident occurred on Monday night, with the victim remaining trapped for an unknown period of time.

The woman, who was in the crosswalk when the light turned green, was first struck by a human-driven car. She was then thrown onto the pavement in front of the Cruise, which ran over her and then stopped while still on top of her.

“At approximately 9:30 pm on October 2, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV,” Cruise said in an Oct. 3 post on X.

“The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact. The driver of the other vehicle fled the scene, and at the request of the police the AV was kept in place.”

The woman was pinned to the ground by the driverless car, with its rear axle and tire over one of her legs, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The police said that the driver who hit the woman fled the scene. The culprit has not been captured yet.

Austin Tutone, a witness who was at the site of the incident, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he tried to reassure the woman while she lay trapped beneath the Cruise AV. “I told her, ‘The ambulance is coming’ and that she’d be okay. She was just screaming.”

San Francisco firefighters came to the scene and lifted the car off the woman. Justin Schorr, captain of the San Francisco Fire Department, told the outlet that when the Cruise car sensed something under its rear axle, it instantly came to a halt and switched on its hazard lights. This kept the woman pinned under the vehicle.

It was only after firefighters obstructed the driverless car’s sensors that the Cruise control center was alerted about the situation and disabled the vehicle remotely. The woman was transported to a hospital with “multiple traumatic injuries,” Mr. Schorr said.

Cruise Under Scrutiny

Driverless cars have come under scrutiny after the vehicles were involved in multiple incidents in San Francisco.

A subsidiary of General Motors (GM), Cruise was granted approval to operate autonomous car taxi services, known as robotaxis, 24/7 throughout San Francisco in August.

Just a week after the approval, the state Department of Motor Vehicles asked Cruise to cut down its fleet of robotaxis as authorities began investigating two crashes involving the company’s cars. Cruise committed to deploy a maximum of 50 driverless cars during the day and 150 at night.

Earlier in April, GM recalled 300 Cruise robotaxis after one of the vehicles crashed into the back of a San Francisco bus. The crash was caused by software issues, and the recalled vehicles were updated.

At the time, Cruise said that the collision was due to “an issue related to prediction of the unique movements of articulated vehicles.”

An articulated vehicle has a pivot point in its construction, allowing it to bend from side to side, helping the vehicle turn more sharply. Such vehicles include buses, tractors, and trailers.

In addition to accidents, self-driving cars have also been blamed for traffic jams. In August, multiple Cruise autonomous cars came to a standstill in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, blocking intersections for about 15 minutes, CNN reported.

Cruise blamed a nearby music festival for the incident, stating that the festival “posed wireless bandwidth constraints causing delayed connectivity to our vehicles.”

Safety Worries

In August, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu filed an administrative motion (pdf) with the California Public Utilities Commission, asking it to halt the unrestricted expansion of Cruise robotaxis in the city.

A Waymo driverless taxi stops on a street in San Francisco for several minutes because the back door was not completely shut, while traffic backs up behind it, on Feb. 15, 2023. Terry Chea/AP Photo

“San Francisco will suffer serious harm if Cruise is allowed expansion in the City with no limitations on geographic area, service hours, and fleet size. It is foreseeable that driverless AV operations will significantly expand in the near-term,” the filing said.

“The performance of Cruise’s driverless AVs currently in limited deployment and testing has interfered with first responder operations, public transit, street construction workers, and the flow of traffic generally.”

Following the launch of Cruise’s driverless vehicles, there have been 600 reported incidents of the autonomous cars interfering with street operations, the motion said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Cruise for comment.

Last month, Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) sent a letter (pdf) to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) due to concerns about a lack of safety data regarding driverless vehicles.

“As sophisticated as such software is becoming, AVs on the streets of San Francisco, which we both represent, have been having challenges in addressing complex real-world situations, such as navigating road work zones and reacting to the temporary outage of signals,” said the letter.

“AV incidents are not merely an inconvenience; they endanger the lives of passengers, other drivers, pedestrians, and even individuals with no proximity to the vehicles who require emergency services.”

The letter asked NHTSA to improve data collection on AV incidents and disruptions to ensure that regulators can assess such vehicles and ensure they operate safely.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.