Firetruck had siren, lights on when it hit Cruise car, police say

A San Francisco Fire Department truck hit a driverless Cruise car while responding to an emergency Thursday night, police said.

The crash, which occurred just before 10:30 p.m. at the intersection of Turk and Polk streets in the Tenderloin, injured the driverless car’s passenger, according to the San Francisco Police Department and an announcement from Cruise. The injuries were not life-threatening, SFPD spokesperson Gonee Sepulveda told SFGATE in an email, though the passenger was transported to a local hospital.

The firetruck’s lights and siren were on when it hit the driverless car, Sepulveda said. She did not say where specifically the firetruck was going, nor did Cruise in its statement. The San Francisco Fire Department told SFGATE the collision is “under investigation” and referred any further questions back to SFPD.

Cruise disclosed the crash on X, formerly known as Twitter, at around 4 a.m. Friday morning. The company wrote that its vehicle had a green light to go through the intersection, where it collided with the firetruck.

The car’s passenger side doors were badly dented, according to video shared by ABC7 (KGO-TV), which also showed police officers and Cruise workers standing around the intersection next to the firetruck and damaged Cruise car. Cruise told SFGATE it observed the passenger walking around the vehicle and talking to first responders on the scene before the passenger was transported to the hospital.

“We are investigating to better understand our AVs performance, and will be in touch with the City of San Francisco about the event,” the General Motors-owned company wrote in one of its Friday morning posts. 

San Francisco’s fire chief, Jeanine Nicholson, has been an outspoken opponent of Cruise and Waymo vehicles’ proliferation in the city. She attended an Aug. 7 meeting before the California Public Utilities Commission and described the cars’ poor track record with the city’s emergency vehicles.

As SFGATE previously reported at the time of the Aug. 7 meeting, which featured a slide deck on autonomous vehicle performance in the city, “In 2023, the department logged about 50 incidents involving AVs that nearly crashed into personnel, obstructed travel or blocked stations, per the presentation — and five more reports were written up over the weekend.”

“And you might say well, 55, that’s not a lot. Well, if it’s your family, it’s a lot,” Nicholson said during the presentation. 

Nicholson provided a statement in response to Chiu’s move, sent to SFGATE on Thursday by the city attorney’s office. “We do not believe the industry has any incentive to remain at the table and solve their problems,” she said. “These incidents with Public Safety are not going away and are in fact increasing.”

Hear of anything happening at Cruise or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.