In what seems to be the primary incident of its sort, cops lately pulled over a self-driving automobile with nobody inside it.
The incident, which occurred on a avenue in San Francisco earlier this month, was caught on video by a passing pedestrian. It exhibits a number of site visitors cops pondering about deal with the incident after stopping the automobile for failing to have its entrance lights on whereas driving at evening.
Welcome to the longer term. Cop pulls over driverless automobile (as a result of no lights?) Then Cruise goes on the lamb. (by way of https://t.co/mtmsIeOAUP) pic.twitter.com/ecQ5xXuSnS
— Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) April 10, 2022
The footage exhibits the autonomous automobile, operated by GM-owned Cruise, ready at a cease gentle. As a cop emerges from his automobile and approaches the robo-car, somebody could be heard calling out, “Ain’t no one in it.”
The officer friends into the automobile, realizes that there’s certainly nobody inside, and returns to the police automobile.
At this level, the Cruise automobile seems to be prefer it’s about to flee the scene because it immediately speeds off.
Nevertheless, as soon as it passes by way of the inexperienced gentle and reaches the opposite facet of the junction, the automobile’s hazard lights come on because it involves a halt by the sidewalk.
Because the cop automobile drives up behind the Cruise automobile for a second time, a bemused bystander could be heard saying, “I’m gonna have to look at this.”
This time, two officers emerge from the police automobile and strategy the empty robo-car. A crowd of onlookers could be heard chuckling on the unusual flip of occasions because the cops spend a number of minutes hanging across the automobile. The video ends shortly after a 3rd officer arrives on the scene.
It later emerged that one of many cops had referred to as Cruise personnel by way of a cellphone quantity displayed on the autonomous automobile.
Shortly after the video appeared on-line on Sunday, Cruise responded with a tweet, saying: “Our [autonomous vehicle] yielded to the police automobile, then pulled over to the closest protected location for the site visitors cease, as supposed. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no quotation was issued.”
It’s not clear why the lights on the Cruise automobile had been off because it drove alongside the streets at evening. Avisionews has contacted Cruise to be taught extra and we are going to replace this text after we hear again.
Whereas there have already been plenty of reported incidents of self-driving vehicles being pulled over by cops for obvious driving violations, this seems to have been the primary case the place the autonomous automobile had no security driver nor passengers inside. Following years of on-road testing with a security driver aboard, California’s Division of Motor Automobiles gave Cruise permission to driver absolutely driverless automobiles on the streets of San Francisco on the finish of 2020.
This month’s incident highlights among the surprising eventualities that may happen with the autonomous know-how, although one hopes that such safety-related incidents shall be few and much between if autonomous vehicles ever go mainstream.
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