A Google self-driving car was pulled over by a police officer in Mountain View, California for going too slow.
Google's self-driving cars have created a buzz for some time now. While computers inside these cars are smart enough to make accurate and complex decisions on their own, Google's driver-less cars are still a long way before responding to a police warning for going too slow, said MSN.com.
"As the officer approached the slow moving car, he realized it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle," said a blog post by Mountain View Police Department. Apparently, it was considered a criminal act for going at a speed of 25kmh. But there was no driver, so a ticket could not be given.
However, there was a passenger in the auto-driven vehicle and the cop enquired how the Google car was selecting speeds at specific roads. He felt the passenger should be given a lesson on "impeding traffic." The officer thought the self-driving car was not aware of the 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code.
But that is no surprise since Google has already set a speed limit of 25mph for its current batch of self-driving cars. This is a safety precaution taken by Google. As Google improves its technology, the speed of automated car should be comparable to that of human drivers.
Analysts like Donald Norman who is the Director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego say the real problem with automated vehicles is that they are too safe. One of the biggest challenges for Google's self-driving cars is to make it fit into the real world, fully integrated to face more aggressive modes of driving protocols that humans are likely to use.