A police officer pulled over one of Google’s self-driving cars in California because it was driving too slow and holding up traffic.
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The Google Self-Driving auto 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. An officer pulled over the auto after spotting traffic backing up behind it.
Google’s self-driving auto was pulled over by a police officer for driving too slow.
Since the start of the initiative in 2009, Google’s cars have clocked up 1,268,108 miles in autonomous mode, where software is doing the driving, and are now averaging more than 10,000 miles per week in public.
The company went on to say that its vehicles’ speeds are capped for safety concerns, and that it was important that the cars “feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets”.
While the police declined to give a ticket this time, we’re willing to bet there are a ton of Mountain View drivers who dread seeing one of these cars.
A California police officer from Mountain View had noticed that a few cars were trailing a white, small auto.
As an increasing number of self-driving cars are tested on USA roads, more questions are being asked about the safety of these vehicles and if there’s a chance that they may drive too fast.
“As the officer approached the slow-moving auto he realised it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle”, the department said in its post. No ticket were issued because “it was lawful for the vehicle to be traveling on the street as El Camino Real is rated at 35 miles per hour”, the department said.
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If you’re living in Mountain View, California, the chances of seeing a Google driverless vehicle are pretty big, as the search engine giant keeps testing them.
