Google’s driverless car has been pulled over by police for driving too slow in Mountain View, Silicon Valley. The vehicle was stopped for doing 24mph in a 35mph zone.
Google self-driving cars have driven 1.3 million miles and haven’t managed to get a speeding ticket yet. One of them was stopped by a Mountain View Police Department (MVPD) deputy on the El Camino Real near Rengstorff Avenue, a public road about 2.3 miles from Google’s headquarters in California, not for breaking the speed limit, but for travelling “too slowly”, as said the police, and causing a big queue of traffic. Google has been testing its prototype self-driving cars in Mountain View since June.
A photo of a Mountain View traffic officer pulling over one of Google’s cars for “driving too slowly” went viral this week after it was posted to Facebook by Aleksandr Milewski. You can check the photo here.
According to the Mountain View Police Department (MVPD), an traffic officer observed regular traffic slowing down and noticed a car traveling 24mph in a 35mph zone. The Google self-driving cars operate under the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Definition of the California Vehicle Code and can only be operated on roadways with speed limits bellow 35 mph. The MVPD said that in this case, “it was lawful for the car to be traveling on the street as El Camino Real is rated at 35 mph.”
Google posted a photo of the incident with the caption: ‘Driving too slowly? Bet humans don’t get pulled over for that too often.’
