A recent video uploaded shows a driverless Cruise car being pulled over in San Francisco by police who found the self-driving vehicle had no one behind the wheel.
Cruisean autonomous vehicle development company owned by General Motors, has tested its robotaxis in the streets of San Francisco and recently began carrying passengers on limited routes. However, not all vehicles seem to behave as expected, one of them even put the police in a disconcerting situation. This is not the first time that the police have been confronted with such situations, since they had already stopped a self-driving car from Google without a driver for being too slow.
While the local police were on patrol, they decided to stop Cruise’s car for a traffic stop. According to the witnesses on the spot, the object of the control would have been the absence of headlights, whereas it was however night. The problem is that there was no one inside to control, the vehicle being fully autonomous. Even worse, the car would have tried to flee only seconds after being stopped on the side of the road.
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Self-driving vehicle attempted to flee police
After stopping the fully autonomous Chevy Bolt, we can see that the San Francisco police officer approached the window of the car, before trying (unsuccessfully) to open the door. Faced with this failure, the police officer returned to his patrol car, but certainly did not expect the autonomous vehicle to begin to drive away.
As we were almost dealing with a new Black Mirror storyline with the police engaging in a chase with an autonomous vehicle, the latter finally stopped with his hazard lights a little further down the road. The police then position themselves behind the vehicle again, get out of the car, then circle around the vehicle, probably trying to figure out how to turn on its headlights.
Shortly after the video went viral, Cruise responded with a tweet, stating, ” Our self-driving vehicle yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic check, as planned. An officer contacted Cruise staff and no ticket was issued “.