If you feared the autonomous era would be marked by self-driving cars hurtling breakneck across cities as their occupants clung helplessly on, think again. Autonomous cars, it seems, are cautious in the extreme.
Google has admitted one of its self-driving cars was stopped on a public road near its Californian campus, not for exceeding the speed limit, but for driving at 24mph in 35mph zone. Google’s self-driving cars are limited to 25mph for ‘safety reasons’.
It’s an offence in California to drive ‘at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic’, so Mountain View traffic officers – presumably with no small measure of confusion – stopped the driverless car for a quick chat.
“The officer […] made contact with the operators to learn more about how the car was choosing speed along certain roadways and to educate the operators about impending traffic,” revealed Mountain View’s police department.
Whether the cop threw in an extra caution for the pod-car ‘looking a bit smug’ remains unclear.
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