It was a rough night for the robotaxis Thursday, with two self-driving Cruise vehicles getting into car crashes — one striking, or getting struck by, a fire truck that was responding to a call, and one passenger was hospitalized with a head injury.

It’s been a whack week for the self-driving robotaxis of Cruise, ironically timed just after they won state approval to run the self-driving cars on all SF streets at all hours and charge fares. The Chronicle reports that Cruise autonomous vehicles were involved in two separate accidents Thursday night, one where the Cruise car collided with a fire truck that was responding to a call, and the passenger inside the Cruise vehicle was treated for injuries.  

KPIX has video from the scene of that accident, which occurred at about 10:15 p.m. at Turk and Polk streets, a couple blocks north of City Hall. Cruise’s version of events is that “One of our cars entered the intersection on a green light and was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene.”

But KPIX actually spoke to a firefighter on the scene, which provides a whole different context. “According to a firefighter at the scene, the Cruise driverless autonomous vehicle did not yield to the fire truck that was responding to a call nearby,” that station reports.

Right, and so this adds more fuel to the fire, so to speak, of the debate the SF Fire Department was trying to have with state regulators about how these vehicles respond in emergency situations, and in the presence of emergency vehicles.

And yes, the passenger inside that Cruise vehicle was injured. Cruise says “Our car contained one passenger who was treated on scene and transported via ambulance for what we believe are non-severe injuries.”

KPIX adds that the Cruise's airbags activated but the person still suffered a blow to the head. No further word on that individual’s condition, but there were other social media videos posted by passersby.

The second accident, which happened a couple hours later at Mission and 26th streets, is also shaping up to involve some dispute over what actually occurred and which vehicle was at fault. According to the Chronicle's version of events, which is based on a statement from Cruise, “another driverless car, which had no passengers, entered the intersection on a green light when another car ran a red light at a high speed.”

But the above tweet from Mission Local reporter Eleni Balakrishnan says that “witnesses tell me the gray car had a green light on mission st and the cruise vehicle just stopped in the middle of the road coming down 26th.” And obviously, that’s some pretty severe damage.

Yes, these cars have cameras, so you’d think the footage would resolve any disputes. But will Cruise share that video? And how forthcoming will they be when there are disputes over what actually took place?

KGO also has video from the scene of the first accident with the fire truck, as well as remarks from City Attorney David Chiu, who just filed a motion with the state urging them to reverse that state-level regulatory approval of the driverless cars’ expanded use.

“San Francisco is really the experimental lab for this industry,” Chiu told the station. “We think it's critical that they work with the city to make sure that our residents are safe, and that they’re not interfering with out first responders, traffic flow, public transit, etcetera.”

If the Cruise vehicle did, in fact, fail to yield to a fire truck, even if it had the green light, that may be another of the kinks that these self-driving cars have yet to figure out. And folks, these SF Fire Department already has a pretty contentious relationship with the self-driving car companies. Plus SFGate reported that a Crusie vehicle drove into and got stuck in wet concrete on Tuesday.

So it appears these things are still to some degree in learning mode with their machine learning. And for better or worse, now the state has approved the robotaxi expansion here, the rest of us on San Francisco streets and sidewalks are just along for the ride.

Related: Friday’s North Beach Self-Driving Car Clusterf*** Has SF Officials Begging the State to Walk Back Approval [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist