A tow truck driver allegedly targeted a Northern California couple by attempting to steal their car as they were stopped at a traffic light in downtown San Francisco, video footage appears to show.

Joanne, who only gave ABC7 News her first name, and her husband were reportedly driving through downtown San Francisco running errands on the morning of April 9, 2024, before the interaction occurred. As the couple stopped at a traffic light, they noticed a yellow specialty tow truck approaching near them as they sat in their silver 2017 Toyota Corolla, according to the outlet.

The couple initially believed the truck driver was heading toward a nearby Waymo autonomous vehicle; However, according to the outlet, he began reversing toward the couple, lowering the vehicle's lever as he did so. (RELATED: San Francisco Can't Seem to Get Rid of Its Poop Problem Despite Spending Millions on Public Toilets)

“We were at a stoplight minding our own business,” Joanne told the outlet. “It came from the side. I thought he was turning right. It started in reverse and all the lights came on. That’s when we thought, ‘Hey, something’s really wrong.’ His lever fell down.”

Video footage of the incident was posted on X (formerly known as Twitter), showing the moment the yellow tow truck appears to attempt to cling to Joanne's car by reversing. The bystander who recorded the video could be heard screaming, “What the hell are you doing?” at the tow truck, as Joanne could faintly be heard also trying to yell at the tow truck driver.

This woman and her husband were stopped at a traffic light at Montgomery & Bush yesterday morning when a tow truck came out of nowhere and tried to hook up to their Toyota!

I spoke to Joanne today who says her car is paid off, she's paid off her registration and doesn't understand why her car was targeted. … pic.twitter.com/6p2z0yBEfg

— Dion Lim (@DionLimTV) April 11, 2024

When the light turned green, the tow truck failed to move forward, trapping the couple, according to the outlet.

“We freaked out. “The first instinct was to get away,” Joanne told ABC7 News.

However, a black sedan was seen reversing directly behind the couple's Toyota, giving the couple room to avoid the tow truck and escape down the street. The tow truck then followed the couple's car for several blocks, Joanne claimed, the outlet reported.

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu announced in February that Auto Towing and several related individuals and companies, including Specialty Towing, were suspended and barred from bidding on or receiving city contracts, according to a press release. The towing companies were suspended by authorities for “illegally towing vulnerable people's cars from a private commercial parking lot, limiting vehicle pickup times and pressuring vehicle owners to pay in cash.”

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Authorities say a man was struck while waiting for a bus in San Francisco's Richmond neighborhood when a car plowed into the bus stop. The San Francisco Police Department reported the incident occurred around 4:50 p.m. Saturday at Fulton Street and Park Presidio Boulevard, across from Golden Gate Park, SF.

The injured pedestrian, an adult male, was found on the sidewalk by officers who quickly rendered aid. Paramedics took the victim to a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, according to a statement obtained by KGO. The vehicle, a Nissan, landed on the curb and struck and hit a “Pedestrian Yield” sign.

To add to the severity, the accident occurred just a week after a tragic incident in which a 78-year-old woman drove into a bus stop in West Portal, claiming the lives of a family of four. Although no charges have been filed against the driver of the previous accident, Jen Nossokoff, a San Francisco resident and eyewitness to the most recent accident, expressed her dismay, telling KGO: “I'm heartbroken that I'm exactly one week after the terrible tragedy in the West Portal.” A man is placed on a stretcher after sustaining a head injury when another car collided with people waiting at a bus stop.

Law enforcement issued a citation for multiple traffic violations against the male driver of the Nissan. Following these incidents, State Senator Scott Wiener called for safer roads and stricter speed rules on social media, according to SFist, proclaiming, “We can make our streets safer.” Wiener is advocating for legislation that would enforce speed limits by limiting the speed of cars to no more than 10 miles per hour over the prescribed limit.

San Francisco Police are asking anyone with information about the recent crash to come forward and provide details to the department by calling 415-575-4444 or texting TIP411 and prefixing the message with “SFPD.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco police are set to provide new details Thursday on their fatal shooting of a man who crashed a car into the Chinese Consulate earlier this month, including releasing new video from the incident.

Police scheduled a virtual town hall in the afternoon to update people on the investigation into the Oct. 9 crash that ended with the death of Zhanyuan Yang. San Francisco police typically host such town halls within 10 days of fatal police shootings.

Yang, a 31-year-old San Francisco resident, rammed a car into the visa office of the consulate, which is in a residential neighborhood next to a major street. Investigators so far haven’t released a possible motive or provided details of the shooting, including whether Yang had a weapon.

Sergii Molchanov was in line waiting for his turn to submit his visa documents when he said the blue Honda sedan barreled in through the main doors at full speed, barely missing him.

Molchanov told The Associated Press that the car struck a wall and the driver was bleeding from his head as he got out of the car, yelling about the C.C.P., an abbreviation for the Chinese Communist Party

Another witness, Tony Xin, told KTVU-TV that the driver was holding two knives when he exited the car and began arguing with security guards.

Police arrived less than a minute later, he said.

The crash was condemned by the Chinese government and by the White House. It took place as San Francisco prepared to host next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a gathering of world leaders from Pacific Rim nations.

The San Francisco consulate has been targeted a number of times before. Among the most serious was a fire set by a Chinese man on New Year’s Day 2014 at the main entrance. It charred a section of the outside of the building.

The man, who was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, told authorities he was driven by voices he was hearing. He was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.

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© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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SAN FRANCISCO – A car rammed into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on Monday, coming to a stop in the lobby and creating a chaotic scene that ended with police shooting the driver, who later died at the hospital, officials said.

San Francisco police said they didn’t know why the unidentified driver smashed through the front of the consulate, located on a major street across from the city’s Japantown neighborhood. In a statement, the Chinese Consulate general described it as a “violent attack.”

Police descended on the consulate shortly after 3 p.m. on a report of a vehicle crashing into the building and urged people to avoid the area. Video from the scene showed a blue Honda sedan inside the lobby of the consulate’s visa office.

Officers entered the building, made contact with the suspect and opened fire, San Francisco police Sgt. Kathryn Winters said during a brief news conference. Despite “life-saving efforts” the suspect died at a hospital.

Police did not describe how the shooting unfolded, how many officers fired or if the driver had a weapon. There were no reports of any injured people inside the building.

Police are working and coordinating with investigators from the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Consulate.

“I wish I could give you more but this is a very complex investigation,” Winters said.

The statement from the Chinese Consulate general demanded more details about what happened and asked that it be “dealt with seriously in accordance with the law.”

“Our embassy severely condemns this violent attack,” the statement said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin repeated that statement at a daily briefing Tuesday without giving any details about damage to the consulate or injuries to staff and visitors.

“We strongly urge the U.S. to launch a swift investigation and take effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese diplomatic missions and personnel there in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,” Wang said, referring to the 1961 agreement governing relations between countries.

The San Francisco consulate has been targeted a number of times before. Among the most serious was a fire set by a Chinese man on New Year’s Day 2014 at the main entrance. It charred a section of the outside of the building.

The man, who was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, told authorities he was driven by voices he was hearing. He was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.

San Francisco is preparing to host next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a gathering of world leaders from Pacific Rim nations. President Joe Biden plans to attend but it’s not clear if Chinese President Xi Jinping will come.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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San Francisco police investigate at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. Officials said a car rammed into the consulate building Monday, coming to a stop in the lobby and creating a chaotic scene that ended with police shooting the driver, who later died at the hospital. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group via AP)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A car rammed into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on Monday, coming to a stop in the lobby and creating a chaotic scene that ended with police shooting the driver, who later died at the hospital, officials said.

San Francisco police said they didn’t know why the unidentified driver smashed through the front of the consulate, located on a major street across from the city’s Japantown neighborhood. In a statement, the Chinese Consulate general described it as a “violent attack.”

Police descended on the consulate shortly after 3 p.m. on a report of a vehicle crashing into the building and urged people to avoid the area. Video from the scene showed a blue Honda sedan inside the lobby of the consulate’s visa office.

Officers entered the building, made contact with the suspect and opened fire, San Francisco police Sgt. Kathryn Winters said during a brief news conference. Despite “life-saving efforts” the suspect died at a hospital.

Police did not describe how the shooting unfolded, how many officers fired or if the driver had a weapon. There were no reports of any injured people inside the building.

Police are working and coordinating with investigators from the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Consulate.

“I wish I could give you more but this is a very complex investigation,” Winters said.

The statement from the Chinese Consulate general demanded more details about what happened and asked that it be “dealt with seriously in accordance with the law.”

“Our embassy severely condemns this violent attack,” the statement said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin repeated that statement at a daily briefing Tuesday without giving any details about damage to the consulate or injuries to staff and visitors.

“We strongly urge the U.S. to launch a swift investigation and take effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese diplomatic missions and personnel there in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,” Wang said, referring to the 1961 agreement governing relations between countries.

The San Francisco consulate has been targeted a number of times before. Among the most serious was a fire set by a Chinese man on New Year’s Day 2014 at the main entrance. It charred a section of the outside of the building.

The man, who was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, told authorities he was driven by voices he was hearing. He was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.

San Francisco is preparing to host next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a gathering of world leaders from Pacific Rim nations. President Joe Biden plans to attend but it’s not clear if Chinese President Xi Jinping will come.

The post Automotive rams into Chinese language consulate in San Francisco and police fatally shoot driver, officers say | WTAJ appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 31-year-old San Francisco man has been identified as the driver who was shot and killed by police after crashing a car into the Chinese consulate on Monday, drawing condemnation from the White House and Chinese government.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 31-year-old San Francisco man has been identified as the driver who was shot and killed by police after crashing a car into the Chinese consulate on Monday, drawing condemnation from the White House and Chinese government.

The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified the driver as Zhanyuan Yang on Thursday. The office said in an email it had no additional information to disclose.

Yang rammed a vehicle into the visa office of the consulate. A witness said he was bleeding from the head as he exited the vehicle yelling about the C.C.P., an abbreviation for the Chinese Communist Party.

San Francisco police arrived on the scene and shot the driver, who died later in a hospital.

Police have not disclosed how the shooting unfolded or how many officers fired. There were no reports of any injured people inside the building.

Police said Monday they did not know why the driver smashed into the consulate, which is in a residential neighborhood next to a major street.

The Associated Press

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 31-year-old San Francisco man has been identified as the driver who was shot and killed by police after crashing a car into the Chinese consulate on Monday, drawing condemnation from the White House and Chinese government.

The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified the driver as Zhanyuan Yang on Thursday. The office said in an email it had no additional information to disclose.

Yang rammed a vehicle into the visa office of the consulate. A witness said he was bleeding from the head as he exited the vehicle yelling about the C.C.P., an abbreviation for the Chinese Communist Party.

San Francisco police arrived on the scene and shot the driver, who died later in a hospital.

Police have not disclosed how the shooting unfolded or how many officers fired. There were no reports of any injured people inside the building.

Police said Monday they did not know why the driver smashed into the consulate, which is in a residential neighborhood next to a major street.

Copyright
© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A car rammed into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on Monday, coming to a stop in the lobby and creating a chaotic scene that ended with police shooting the driver, who later died at the hospital, officials said.

Police descended on the consulate building after 3 p.m. on a report of a vehicle crashing into the building and urged people to avoid the area. Officers entered the lobby of the consulate’s visa office, made contact with the suspect and there was a shooting involving an officer and the driver, police Sgt. Kathryn Winters said during a short news conference. Despite “life-saving efforts,” the suspect was pronounced dead at the hospital, police said.

Television cameras showed a Honda sedan crashed into the visa office and the doors in front of the building were cordoned off.

Winters said they didn’t know why the vehicle crashed into the building or how many people were inside at the time but said they had no reports of other injuries.

Police are working and coordinating with investigators from the U.S. Department of State and the Chinese consulate.

“I wish I could give you more but this is a very complex investigation,” Winters said.

A statement from the Chinese consulate denounced Monday’s incident.

“On the afternoon of Oct. 9, 2023, local time, an unidentified person drove a vehicle and violently crashed into the document hall of our consulate, posing a serious threat to the safety of staff and people on site, and damaging the facilities of our consulate,” the statement said. “Our embassy severely condemns this violent attack.” The consulate said that it has demanded more details about the incident and asked that it be “dealt with seriously in accordance with the law.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin repeated that statement at a daily briefing Tuesday afternoon without giving any details about damage to the consulate or injuries to staff and visitors.

“We strongly urge the U.S. to launch a swift investigation and take effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese diplomatic missions and personnel there in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,” Wang said, referring to the 1961 agreement governing relations between countries.

China’s Consulate General sits on a major street across from San Francisco’s Japantown neighborhood.

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Two Waymo driverless cabs stop on a street in San Francisco on February 15, 2023 and drive across from each other before passing each other.

By Michael Liedtke | Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO – Two pioneering ride-hailing services are breaking new ground by applying for governmental approval to transport passengers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through one of the most densely populated cities in the United States in vehicles where nobody sits in the driver’s seat.

If Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, and Waymo, a Google spinoff, reach their goal before the end of the year, San Francisco would become the first US city to have two fully driverless services, competing with Uber, Lyft and traditional taxis – all relying on humans to control the cars.

But Cruise and Waymo still face potential roadblocks, including complaints that their vehicles are making unexpected, congested stops that could annoy other travelers and endanger public safety.

Cruise has been charging driverless rides in less-congested parts of San Francisco during nighttime hours since last June. Waymo is offering free driverless rides in a larger part of the city and is awaiting approval to start loading passengers into robotic vehicles, which Google secretly began working on 14 years ago.

Efforts to roll out competing driverless services across San Francisco are proving to be the first step in a far more ambitious expansion centered in California — a state that currently has more than 35 million human-driven vehicles on its books.

Cruise recently applied for permission to test its robotic vehicles across California at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour (88 kilometers per hour) — that’s 25 miles per hour (40 kilometers per hour) above the top speed of its robotic taxis in San Francisco. Waymo is already testing its self-driving cars in Los Angeles – the second largest city in the United States

The California push comes in addition to Cruise, which is beginning to test its robotic taxis in Austin, Texas, as well as in Phoenix, where Waymo’s driverless ride-hailing service has been ferrying passengers along Arizona roads that are far less congested and challenging than those since 2020 the streets of Arizona San Francisco.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s improving pretty quickly,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt told The Associated Press. “As it is fine-tuned, it will become more elegant over time, but the security will continue to improve as well.”

Saswat Panigrahi, Waymo’s chief product officer, believes the company’s past experience will pay off as the company applies its learnings from operating a driverless ridesharing service in Phoenix to busier cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“The uncertainty is definitely a lot less now that we’ve run a fully autonomous service with real drivers,” Panigrahi said.

Both Cruise and Waymo recently announced that their driverless fleets have each traveled more than 1 million miles without a major accident. But even their robotic taxis have been struggling with pesky problems in San Francisco, which have resulted in traffic delays and other annoyances that could annoy people or, worse, block emergency vehicles en route to a fire or other urgent calls for help.

“The expected things are simple, but it’s the unexpected things that people react to in real time that are of concern,” said transportation expert Nico Larco, director of the Urbanism Next Center at the University of Oregon. “At best, when cars stop in the middle of the road, it only leads to confusion, chaos and congestion. But the worst cases could actually harm someone.”

Two Associated Press reporters witnessed the potential problems firsthand in mid-February after a Waymo vehicle transported them safely on a trip through San Francisco that involved navigating hilly terrain, turning rush hour traffic, and making room for pedestrians to make who darted onto the zebra crossings.

During one trip, the robotaxi pulled up in the middle of the street after AP reporters got out and stayed there for several minutes, with a line of human-driven cars piled up behind it. It turned out that a rear door on the driver’s side was not fully closed.

In another Cruise-related glitch last September, an AP reporter took a roughly five-mile ride in a robotic taxi nicknamed “Peaches,” which repeatedly avoided the intended destination. The reporter eventually had to use the Cruise app to contact a dispatcher at a remote headquarters so the car could be pulled over — in the middle of the road.

Vogt noted that a number of improvements have been made since then, and indeed, two different cruise robotic taxis — one named “Cherry” and the other named “Hollandaise” — hit the same reporter and his colleagues at the designated designations during a follow-up investigation departed despite Cherry stopping at a bus stop that momentarily prevented the arrival of an oncoming bus.

A warning letter the San Francisco County Transportation Authority sent to California regulators in January raised broader concerns about the operation of robotic taxis, which cause headaches for those outside the vehicle.

The letter cited at least 92 reported incidents of Cruise robotic taxis suddenly stopping on the road as of December 31. At least three of the incidents blocked public transit lanes for periods between nine and 18 minutes.

According to the agency, over the past year, driverless Cruise vehicles have also prevented firefighters from rushing to a three-alarm blaze or illegally entering areas where ongoing attempts to extinguish the fire have been ongoing around the clock throughout San Francisco until there are more gives information about why and how often the cars regularly congest the traffic. The abrupt braking and stops of Cruise’s robotic taxis have also been under investigation by the federal supervisory authorities since the end of last year.

“We’re just very cautious,” said Tilly Chang, executive director of the San Francisco Transportation Department. “We want to be supporters and help make (driverless driving) possible, but we have to make sure it’s safe.”

Meanwhile, dozens of other tech companies and automakers have joined a race to develop self-driving car technology that collectively costs more than $100 billion. Your ultimate goal is to make money from robot drivers that are safer and cheaper than human drivers. Robotaxis could also lower fares for passengers, although Vogt believes consumers may be willing to pay more for trips without a stranger at the wheel.

Investments to date have resulted in a mix of successes, failures, and exaggerations from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who predicted nearly four years ago that the electric carmaker would have a giant robotaxi service by the end of 2020, but still hasn’t done so has. I’m nowhere near achieving that goal.

Cruise’s owner, the nearly 125-year-old General Motors, is nevertheless so confident that robotic taxis can drive more responsibly than humans and expand its driverless service to more US markets that he made the bold prediction last fall that Cruise would pay a billion By 2025, sales are projected to increase — a big jump from Cruise’s $106 million in sales last year, when the company also lost nearly $2 billion.

That optimism stands in stark contrast to the disheartening experience of another storied automaker, Ford Motor, which paid $1 billion to acquire driverless startup Argo AI in 2017 but closed the division last October at a $2.7 billion loss dollars after failing to find a buyer for the technology.

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