While we’d love to tell you that a Google Car was pulled over for blazing through a New York neighbourhood at Ferrari speeds, that’s not the case.
Police noticed the pint sized car holding up an enormous line of traffic in Mountain View California, traveling at 25mph in the 35mph zone. Naturally, no fines were given out to the autonomous car, however the officer did take the time to educate the operators of the vehicle about impeding traffic. As it turns out, they limited all their Google Car ‘s to a snail-like 25mph, regardless of the route it’s traveling on. Google explained the reasoning for this speed-cap saying:
“We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets,”
They also added that:
“Like this officer, people sometimes flag us down when they want to know more about our project.”
Google chose to point out, that despite the 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving they’ve done with their Google Car ‘s, the equivalent of 90 years of driving, they’ve never gotten a ticket. GT Speed would like to point out that there is little point in driving if you’re limited to a snail’s pace.
Our autonomous future looks bright…
Video source: CNN