A self-driving car was ticketed in San Francisco, but GM-owned Cruise says it did nothing wrong

Thomson Reuters

A woman gets in a self-driving Chevy Bolt EV car during a media event by Cruise, GM's autonomous car unit, in San Francisco

• A self-driving car owned by General Motors was ticketed Monday for cutting off a woman on a crosswalk.
• Cruise, which was acquired by GM in 2016, disputes the ticket and says the car was more than 10 feet away from the pedestrian.
• The ticket comes after a deadly accident in Arizona involving one of Uber's self-driving cars.

A self-driving car owned by General Motors was ticketed in San Francisco Monday after not yielding to pedestrian on a crosswalk, the San Francisco Police Department confirmed to Business Insider.

KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, first reported the incident. The pedestrian involved was not harmed.

The ticket comes as scrutiny of self-driving cars is on the rise, following a deadly accident in Tempe, Arizona one week ago involving one of Uber's self-driving vehicles. The incident has reignited the debate over how safe self-driving cars are during testing.

Giselle Linnane, a SFPD spokeswoman, told Business Insider on Wednesday that the GM vehicle was pulled over in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood earlier this week after an officer saw the car cut off a woman walking on a crosswalk.

Cruise, a self-driving car startup acquired by GM in 2016, disputes the ticket according to KPIX, and says its own data shows the pedestrian was far enough way from the vehicle. According to Cruise data, KPIX reported, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the vehicle while in self-driving mode.

Cruise did not respond to request for comment from Business Insider.

"We don't look at or work with that data," Linnane said. "It's whatever the officer observed at the scene and from his observation, there was a violation."

The human test driver, who was in the car at the time and ultimately received the citation, is not at fault and did everything right, Cruise told KPIX. It is unclear if Cruise will attempt to legally fight the ticket.

"Safety is our priority in testing our self-driving vehicles. California law requires the vehicle to yield the right of way to pedestrians, allowing them to proceed undisturbed and unhurried without fear of interference of their safe passage through an intersection. Our data indicates that's what happened here," a Cruise spokesperson told KPIX.

This isn't the first time a self-driving car has been pulled over by police. In 2015, a Google self-driving car was pulled over in Mountain View for driving too slow.