Google Self Driving car gets pulled over by police

[maddogchen]

The reason? Driving too slow..."The vehicle was traveling at 24 mph in a 35 mph zone."

Unfortunately it was allowed to drive that slow. Now it makes sense to me when I see these small Google cars, why it seems to drive so much slower than all the other cars around it!

As it turns out, the cars are considered "neighborhood electric vehicles" under the California Vehicle Code, and can be operated on roadways with speed limits at or under 35 mph, according to the police department's blog post.

"In this case," the post continued, "it was lawful for the car to be traveling on the street, as El Camino Real is rated at 35 mph."

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_29110712/mountain-view-google-self-driving-car-pulled-over

 

[jlee]

FYI: the comments on that article may be damaging to your IQ.

 

[HitAnyKey]

Fishy story. For real?

 

[BudAshes]

FYI: the comments on that article may be damaging to your IQ.

So you're saying Google isn't run by mad Nazi scientists?

 

[olds]

How do they get it to pull over?

 

[drnickriviera]

How do they get it to pull over?

That's what i'd like to know. Maybe the passenger changed the destination to a nearby parking lot?? or there's an emergency pull over button.

But that brings up an interesting question. It didn't realize there was an emergency vehicle behind it. Are they going to teach it to yield to them?

 

[bruceb]

Good, we don't need driverless cars anyway.

 

[paperfist]

Who gets the ticket if the driverless car does something illegal?

 

[Griffinhart]

Autonomous cars are required to let humans take over. The "passenger" probably just took control and pulled over.

Other Relevant facts in this, it was doing 24 in a 35 mph zone, while not illegal in itself, it was impeding traffic. Apparently, in CA, slower moving traffic is required to pull over and let traffic pass them if they have 5 or more vehicles behind them. The current crop of Google cars are programmed to not exceed 25MPH.

It's really just another real world example of why we are probably more than just a few years out before wide spread autonomous vehicles become a reality. There are a ton of things they do not do well at yet. If they only had to live in a world where all vehicles were autonomous it would be a lot easier, but that certainly isn't going to be the world they are driven in.

 

[BUTCH1]

How do they get it to pull over?

Tazed it, of course...No, there were passengers riding in it as it was on a test run, they told it to pull over.