The stop occurred Thursday afternoon when an officer noticed traffic building behind a slow-moving auto, the Mountain View Police Department’s blog explained. It’s worth noting that under California’s Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Definition in its Vehicle Code, Google’s self-driving cars can travel no faster than 35 miles per hour.
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The MVPD “meets regularly” with Google to ensure that their vehicles operate safely in the city, the statement said.
The Google Self-Driving vehicle promises to help commuters avoid traffic accidents and navigational blunders, but it still can’t promise to shoulder the burden of dealing with highway patrol. “We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets”, the post says. The police officer was initially unaware that the auto was in fact an autonomous vehicle. In a blog post, Google said that after 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving, they’re proud to say that they’ve never been ticketed. Nonetheless when the officer reached there he found a passenger sitting in the vehicle.
He noted that autonomous cars could reduce fatalities, particularly those connected to drunk driving, but also pointed out that changes to the law might have to occur.
This is one of the few incidents involved Google’s cars, which are carefully created to drive with extreme caution.
“Driving too slowly?” the post asked. The slow speed caught the attention of the officer, who “stopped the vehicle and made contact with the operators to learn more about how the auto was choosing speeds along certain roadways”.
The officer did chat with the occupant of the auto about impeding traffic, according to police. “If you want to limit the auto to 25 miles per hour, perhaps you should select a route which doesn’t include sections with higher speed limits.”, wrote Craig J.
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The Mountain View Police Department, however, did not make it sound like the policeman stopped the auto just out of curiosity.
