Google bus runs over elderly woman, Google denies responsibility: lawyer

On a July evening two years ago, a Google bus turned right at a San Francisco intersection in North Beach. In the crosswalk, with the “walk” signal reportedly green, was Manning Yeung Tam, an 83-year-old woman standing 5 foot 2 and, according to a witness, moving slowly across the asphalt.

“The right side of the bus hit the woman on her left side,” the witness told San Francisco police, according to the police report. “She fell to the ground. The bus continued to turn and (her) body went underneath the bus.”

According to a second witness, the bus kept turning as Tam went beneath it, and she became wedged under the vehicle.

Tam is now suing Google after, according to her lawyer, the company refused to offer compensation. Google did not immediately provide a response to a request for comment.

One of the witnesses said Tam had been close to halfway across the street when she was struck. The bus driver told police he hadn’t seen anyone crossing the street, or in the crosswalk.

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“I made a slow turn,” bus driver Valentin Serrano told police. “Then I heard people yelling at me to stop. I stopped, because they said I ran someone over.”

The police report assigned blame for the crash to Serrano. It described Tam’s injuries as “severe.”

Technology company buses in the Bay Area — used to transport workers to and from offices — have generated controversy, provoking a militant response from critics who see them as a symbol of gentrification. Tech buses have been blocked, vandalized, pelted with stones and even shot at with a BB gun.

Tam’s run-in with the Google bus dislocated her shoulder, and she suffered injuries to her hand, face and hip, her lawyer Shawn Salehieh wrote in a letter to Google.

“My client literally fought for her life,” Salehieh wrote. “San Francisco has become notorious for pedestrian fatalities due to careless drivers such as yours.”

Salehieh said it was only Tam’s “frantic cries” and bystanders’ pounding on the bus that saved her from a worse outcome.

“But for the courage of my client and other pedestrians Mrs. Tam may have been crushed to death,” Salehieh wrote.

Medical and rehabilitation costs for Tam, hospitalized after the accident, amounted to more than $47,000, Salehieh told Google. He proposed to the Mountain View tech giant that it pay her $150,000 to settle the matter. Google offered nothing, he said. He called the company’s response “total and complete denial of responsibility.”

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Google doodle honors California civil rights leader Felicitas Mendez On Thursday, Tam filed suit against Google and Serrano in San Francisco County Superior Court, alleging negligence and seeking unspecified damages.

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