In a blogpost about this week’s incident, the Mountain View police department said an officer “noticed traffic backing up behind a slow-moving vehicle in the eastbound lane”.
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“Driving too slowly? Bet humans don’t get pulled over for that too often”. In a statement, Google said part of the reason for the conservative speed limit is to make the cars “feel friendly and approachable”. In a Google Plus post, they explained that the speed of the prototype was capped at 25 miles per hour for safety reasons.
After assessing as to why the vehicle was moving at a reduced rate of speed, the officer informed the operator and passengers of laws regarding impeding traffic.
Google’s driverless auto project has recorded more than 1.2 million miles of self-driving so far. But what happens when the vehicle in question is driving itself?
Google responded to the hubbub on its Self-Driving auto Project page on Google.
According to a blog post by the Mountain View police department, an officer spotted the auto that was causing the heavy traffic and pulled it over.
California state officials released reports in June detailing six accidents that involved self-driving vehicle prototypes.
That the auto was not ticketed is significant.
Google’s autonomous test cars are programmed to follow the letter of the law.
After flagging this self-drive auto down, the officer spoke with its operators in order to find out more on how this vehicle had been regulating speed on certain paths.
Facebook user Zandr Milewski snapped a picture of the traffic stop and said that he talked to the car’s co-pilot, a Google employee required to ride along with the self-driving auto in case of emergencies.
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It might be a hard picture to imagine, but Alphabet/Google’s self-driving vehicle was pulled over by a police officer in Mountain View, California. Still, they might be pretty disturbing for a few drivers, as they’re not the fastest cars out there.
