Google self-driving car pulled over for 'driving too slowly' in Mountain View
Google self-driving car pulled over for 'driving too
slowly' in Mountain View
By Jason GreenDaily News Staff Writer
POSTED:
11/12/2015 07:54:33 PM
MOUNTAIN VIEW -- When one of Google's self-driving
vehicles is pulled over, who gets the ticket? The passenger or the car?
The question was asked across the Internet on Thursday,
after a police officer stopped one of the gumball-machine-shaped vehicles on El
Camino Real.
In a blog post, the Mountain View Police Department said
the officer noticed traffic backing up behind a slow-moving car in the
eastbound No. 3 lane, near Rengstorff Avenue.
The vehicle was traveling at 24 mph in a 35 mph zone.
"As the officer approached the slow-moving car he
realized it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle," the post said.
"The officer stopped the car," the post
continued, "and made contact with the operators to learn more about how
the car was choosing speeds along certain roadways and to educate the operators
about impeding traffic."
In a Google Plus post, the Google Self-Driving Car
Project appeared to appreciate the humor of the situation.
"Driving too slowly?" the post asked. "Bet
humans don't get pulled over for that too often."
"We've capped the speed of our prototype vehicles at
25 mph for safety reasons," the post explained. "We want them to feel
friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood
streets."
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."
So, no ticket, and the question of who would get it
remains unanswered.
"Like this officer, people sometimes flag us down
when they want to know more about our project," the Google Self-Driving
Car Project said in its post. "After 1.2 million miles of autonomous
driving (that's the human equivalent of 90 years of driving experience), we're
proud to say we've never been ticketed!"
Zandr Milewski photographed the car stop from an office
building at 5150 El Camino Real in Los Altos. He was working on a project in a
conference room when a colleague wandered in with news of what was transpiring
outside.
"We all immediately dropped what we were doing to go
look," Milewski said. "It's not something you see every day."
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