Google’s autonomous driving car stopped for driving too slowly

A Mountain View police officer in California stopped a Google Autonomous Vehicle. The officer stopped the car because he was surprised at the amount of traffic that had formed behind the car.

Traffic was found to be held up by a Google autonomous car driving very slowly. The vehicle was traveling at 24 miles per hour on a road where the maximum speed limit is 35 miles per hour, which translates to 40 and 56 kilometers per hour respectively.

The officer then stopped the car to find out from the occupants why the car chose that speed on the road in question. At the same time, the officer gave instruction on whether or not to obstruct other traffic under the California Vehicle Code, the police department’s blog reads. The car was not inspected because Google’s self-driving cars fall under a different regulation, namely the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Definition from the same regulation. It states that self-driving cars can only drive on roads with a speed limit of up to 35 miles per hour, which was the case here.

In a Google+ response, Google’s Self-Driving Car Project states that the prototypes of the cars cannot go faster than 40 kilometers per hour for safety reasons, so that the cars appear friendly and accessible and do not race through residential areas like speed monsters. So far, not a single Google car has resulted in a traffic fine, according to the Google+ post.