We would have loved to see the dash cam footage of this traffic cop's reaction as he pulls over a little white car on one of his rounds only to discover that... it has no driver!
Maybe this officer forgot that Google's self-driving cars are being tested on the roads of Mountain View. Apparently, he pulled over the vehicle because it was going too slow.
Google took the whole incident in stride. A photo of the enounter even showed up on the Internet. The Google Self-Driving Car Project shared the snapshot on a Google+ post, explaining that they capped the speed limit of their self-driving cars at only 25 mph for safety reasons.
It was previously reported that the driverless cars were also being programmed to be safer around children.
And although we're pretty sure that Google's parent company, Alphabet, can afford to cough up the fine for a traffic ticket, it turns out, no ticket was issued in this instance.
“Like this officer, people sometimes flag us down when they want to know more about our project. 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!” Google said.
Perhaps the self-driving cars haven't been ticketed yet because California laws are actually still quite unsure how to go about with this new technology. Currently, the law states that the ticket should go to the person in the driver's seat. However, this is not very clear-cut if that driver's seat is empty.
Nontheless, Google reassured the public, as well as the law enforcement officials, that their self-driving cars are safe and if any of them shoud happen to break any local laws, they will foot the bill.
The Mountain View Police Department also issued a statement saying that they regularly meet with Google to make sure the vehicles in the Self-Driving Car Project operate within safety limits of the communities they are tested in.
According to the police, the Google car in the photo was self-driving legally on the street which was identified as El Camino Real – a 35 mph zone.
