A delivery robot jumped a red light, smashed into a city bus and then drove off, leaving up to nine passengers injured.
The autonomous Starship machine whizzed over a pedestrian crossing, forcing the bus driver to slam on the brakes.
Standing passengers were flung to the floor, and the robot was shunted along the road before continuing on its way.
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The crash happened in the Estonian capital Tallinn at the junction of Luise and Tehnika streets at around 6 pm on 26 October during rush hour.
Tallinn Transport (TLT) board member Andrei Novikov said: “The robot fled, if you can put it that way.
“It simply drove off after the collision.”
He added that the machine was at fault and that police would investigate why it happened.
A TLT spokesperson warned that leaving an accident scene without meeting legal duties “may constitute an offence”.
Novikov said a moving object suddenly appeared in front of the bus in the dark and that the driver may not have immediately known if it was a robot, an animal or a cyclist.
He stressed the driver acted correctly and that a harder stop “would have been much worse”.
The driver asked passengers if anyone needed an ambulance – none did – then called control and continued the route because damage was minimal and it was rush hour.
He was later sent home shaken, and a replacement took over.
TLT filed a police report, and one passenger later lodged a health complaint.
Starship Technologies, which runs the six-wheeled pavement robots, contacted police and opened an internal probe.
Head of operations Pepe Aaviksoo called the crash “extremely regrettable” and said safety was the company’s top priority.
He disputed the fleeing claim, stating the robot contacted its back-office team, was guided to the kerb, and waited about 10 minutes before moving on.
Aaviksoo said the error was made worse by darkness and a brightly-lit advertisement board behind the traffic light, and that fixes will be mainly software-based.
Starship has now rerouted its machines so they no longer cross that junction.
The robots, which carry Bolt Food branding and deliver groceries and meals, operate fully autonomously in seven countries and have completed 11 million trips covering 24 million kilometres.
They had crossed this same junction successfully more than 4,000 times before Monday’s failure.
A similar robot-bus collision in April 2020 caused no injuries, as reported by Need To Know.
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