The driverless automobile has a woman stuck underneath it. The car company claimed that it is not what it appears to be

 The driverless automobile has a woman stuck underneath it. The car company claimed that it is not what it appears to be

On Monday night, a pedestrian in downtown San Francisco was discovered underneath a driverless car with catastrophic injuries. The autonomous vehicle's operator, though, claims that it is not at fault.

The man has multiple life-threatening injuries, according to Justin Schorr, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Fire Department, who talked to CNN early on Tuesday.

The self-driving car company Cruise, a General Motors (GM) subsidiary with headquarters in San Francisco, was in charge of operating the autonomous vehicle. However, the corporation claims that the pedestrian's injury was caused by another car.

Cruise spokesperson Navideh Forghani told CNN that "a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV." "The pedestrian was propelled in front of the AV by the severe initial impact. The AV then applied hard braking to lessen the impact. According to Forghani, the second car's driver sped away from the accident.

According to Schorr, corporate representatives arrived at the accident scene "very swiftly" and have been working with the authorities.

"There was no driver and no passenger in the car to be able to tell us what happened," Schorr claimed. He did, however, note that Cruise vehicles have their own cameras and gather a variety of telemetric data that could be useful in the accident inquiry. He described it as "a very unusual type of response for San Francisco."

A representative for the Fire Department stated that the unidentified pedestrian is receiving treatment at San Francisco General Hospital for "multiple life-threatening injuries." The San Francisco Police Department is looking into the incident, but they haven't yet made any comments about what happened.

The spokeswoman for Cruise added, "Our sincere concern and focus is the safety of the person who was injured and we are currently collaborating with police to help discover the responsible driver."

Unpopular driverless vehicles

After California regulators last month granted robotaxi companies permission to use their autonomous cars 24/7 around the city, Cruise has become the center of debate in San Francisco.

The company's self-driving vehicles have been cited as the cause of numerous collisions, including one involving a fire truck, and significant traffic bottlenecks. One of its autonomous cabs entered a construction site and came to a stop on wet concrete.

In order to take corrective action, Cruise consented to the California DMV's request to cut back on its fleet by 50%.

The latest occurrences highlight the difficulties in developing entirely safe driverless passenger vehicles.

The $1 billion acquisition of Cruise Automation by General Motors in 2016 cemented the company's position in the battle for autonomous vehicles, but several other companies have already pulled back or given up on their plans. The project has proven to be expensive, and it takes a lot of time and effort to master every condition that people can encounter behind the wheel.

The industry leaders in ridesharing, Uber and Lyft, have both recently sold autonomous car units. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has expressed optimism about the development of driverless vehicles, has not yet fulfilled his promise in full.

Advocates counter that human-driven automobiles continue to be less safe than driverless ones.