Cruise Robotaxi Initially Blamed for Ambulance Delay in Case Where Patient Later Died; Subsequent Reports Clear Cruise of Fault

On August 14, 2023, two Cruise autonomous vehicles operated by General Motors subsidiary Cruise were stopped in the right two lanes of a four-lane street in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood where a 69-year-old homeless man named Sammy Davis had been struck by a city bus. According to a San Francisco Fire Department report, the driverless vehicles delayed transport and medical care when emergency responders attempted to transport the critically injured patient to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, 2.4 miles away. The patient was pronounced dead 20 to 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital. Cruise disputed the claims, stating that footage showed one vehicle moved from the scene before the victim was loaded into the ambulance, while the other stopped until after the ambulance left, with only 90 seconds elapsing between loading and departure. The Fire Department report was one of more than 70 cases of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency responders. City officials later clarified that Cruise was not officially blamed for the patient's death, and that the victim had been fatally struck by a human-operated city bus, not the autonomous vehicles.