The driverless automobile has a woman stuck behind it. She was struck by cars before by others

 The driverless automobile has a woman stuck behind it. She was struck by cars before by others

A person was discovered Monday night badly injured and trapped beneath an autonomous automobile in downtown San Francisco. However, it wasn't the first vehicle to hit the victim.

The self-driving car company Cruise, a General Motors (GM) subsidiary with headquarters in San Francisco, was in charge of operating the autonomous vehicle. The autonomous vehicle was a secondary vehicle in the crash, and the person walking was crossing the intersection when cars had the right of way, according to video provided to CNN by Cruise.

The business Cruise has not made the video available to the public, citing the current police investigation in San Francisco.

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.

Cruise spokesperson Navideh Forghani told CNN that "a human-driven vehicle injured a pedestrian while traveling in the lane adjacent 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.

The video from the autonomous vehicle began when the AV was stopped at a red light, to the right of the suspect car, near the junction of 5th and Market Streets. It was shot from the front and left side camera positions. Both automobiles drove through the intersection after the light turned green and drew near a crosswalk. A woman was seen crossing the street in the middle of the crosswalk as the two automobiles approached. She made an unsuccessful attempt to get to the left side of the AV before the manned green vehicle.

The person was struck by the green vehicle and fell onto its hood before flipping over the roof and rolling off the right side. She crashed to the ground and came to rest directly in front of the AV. As soon as she landed on the pavement, the AV brakes activated, stopping the vehicle on top of her. In line with the lanes, she landed. It's not apparent from the video if she was simply pushed beneath the car or if the front tires ran over her.

According to a Cruise official, San Francisco Police requested that the firm refrain from moving the AV while the vehicle was on top of the victim.

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

"There was no driver and not one passenger in the car to be able to tell police 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 was receiving treatment at San Francisco General Hospital for "multiple potentially fatal 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 condition of the person who was injured and we are making every effort with police to help discover the responsible driver."

Before rescuing the victim from beneath the car, firefighters utilized a device they refer to as the "jaws of life" to lift the car off the victim.

This was the first incidence, according to Lt. Mariano Elias of the San Francisco Fire Department, "where we have a serious harm to others from an autonomous vehicle."

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.

According to the San Francisco Fire Department, 83 incidents involving self-driving automobiles have been recorded so far this year. Instead of occurrences where an autonomous vehicle injured someone, that number reflects the number of times cars have prevented the department from carrying out its functions.

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.