When a police officer in Mountain View California noticed a car obstructing traffic in the right lane, he didn’t expect it to be a robot.
A self-driving car operated and tested by Google was driving slower than required for the particular road it was cruising on – 24 mph in a 35 mph zone, with traffic now slowly backed on its tail.
According to the police department’s post, there was nobody in the driver seat at all. Instead there was a passenger who informed the officer that the speed of the prototype was capped by Google in order to be slowly introduced to the public instead of zipping around scaring curious onlookers.
In the end, no ticket was given. The passenger was however informed of 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code, which related to impeding traffic, a code the robot could not have known of.
“After 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving (roughly equal to 90 years of driving experience), we’re proud to say we’ve never been ticketed!” the car project posted in response.
