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Most people tend to get pulled over for driving too fast, but Google’s self-driving car — which has recently suffered a traffic stop — seemingly broke the rules in a different way. The vehicle was stopped by a traffic officer for going too slow.
The stop was non-incidental, and as is the case with a vast majority of Google’s self-driving vehicle tests the car was manned by a human at the time. Google maintains that they’ve yet to be ticketed for any issue with their self-driving car, and suggests that a lot of these stops happen because people are actually curious about the thing and want a closer look. We’d say that is a fair excuse, especially considering this particular stop happened in what appears to be a parking lot where driving slowly would be applauded by most sane drivers.
Google’s self-driving cars cap out at 25 miles per hour. It’s a safety limitation more than anything, but Google says it’s also a good way to make the vehicle feel more approachable and less intimidating than a seemingly sentient vehicle zipping through your neighborhood at faster speeds. In any case, 1.2 million miles of testing without a ticket is pretty damn good, and if its biggest issue to this point is that it drives too slowly then we won’t put up too much fuss ourselves.
[via Google+]
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