Welcome to the future: In San Francisco, California, the police initially failed when trying to control a driverless car. As reported by The Verge, among others, a police officer from the San Francisco Police Department tried to stop the car on the first weekend in April because the lights of the Cruise company’s car were off.
Cruise car accelerates – and pulls over to the right
A video published on Instagram shows the incident from San Francisco: The clip shows a police officer approaching the cruise car, which is stopped at a red light, looking inside and checking whether there are people inside. When the traffic light changes to green, the car accelerates and it looks as if the vehicle wants to “escape”. However, the car stops shortly after the intersection on the right-hand side of the road and – like a traffic check – the police vehicle parks behind it.
While there have been repeated problems and even fatal accidents with autonomous vehicles on the US roads in the past, this is the first incident in which, according to the news site Digitaltrends.com neither a driver for safety nor a passenger were in the vehicle.
Video shows police control of the autonomous car
An approximately three-minute video documented the somewhat bizarre as well as comical incident in San Francisco. A passerby recorded the clip, it is said to be from April 2nd.
Cruise, which is owned by General Motors (GM), has its According to The Verge, service with robotaxis started in the Californian metropolis about two months ago. The company referred to the incident, which reportedly took place in the busy Richmond area, shortly after the video broke on Twitter positionG. It states that the car drove off to “stop at the next safe place as planned”. The police officer then contacted Cruise and the situation was resolved without further complications.
(tkn)
