Pedestrian Attacks Self-Driving Car In San Francisco's Mission District

C'mon, it happened in the Mission...Potential motives include street theater, rapture, anti-autonomous vehicle bias - or someone who really friggin' hates Chevys. JL

Adam Brinklow reports in Re/code:

Cruise AV, a self-driving car company owned by General Motors, reports that on January 2 an unidentified man in the Mission flung himself onto one of the company’s autonomous vehicles while it was conducting a road test. The car’s human driver says a pedestrian ran into the street against the traffic signal and “shouting....struck the left side of the Cruise AV’s rear bumper and hatch with his entire body.”

Cruise AV, a self-driving car company owned by General Motors, reports that on January 2 an unidentified man in the Mission flung himself onto one of the company’s autonomous vehicles while it was conducting a road test.

According to a report filed with the California DMV (all companies testing self-driving cars on California public streets are required to make public reports any time an accident happens), the close encounter of the vehicular kind happened at 9:27 p.m. as the car was waiting to make a turn and “stopped at a green light in between crosswalks of Valencia Street and 16th Street, waiting for pedestrians to cross.”

The car’s human driver says that a pedestrian then unexpectedly ran into the street against the traffic signal and “shouting....struck the left side of the Cruise AV’s rear bumper and hatch with his entire body.”

The driver adds, “There were no injuries, but the Cruise AV sustained some damage to its rear light.”

No witnesses called the police.

16th and Valencia, where the notably weird incident happened.

Photo by Dreamyshade

Mission Local notes that this is the city’s first self-driving car collision of the year and that Cruise had five accidents in the Mission (out of 22 citywide) in 2017, although almost all were minor and resulted in no injury and little or no damage.

Cruise has the uncomfortable distinction of being the first company whose self-driving cars have actually injured a human being, most notably on December 7 when a GM robot car smacked a motorcyclist in the Haight. However, police found the cyclist, not the car, at fault in that incident.

As for the Mission attack, it’s not clear whether or not the assailant’s spontaneous Valencia Street charge was a reaction to self-driving technology or just a troubled person's outbust.