Google Car On Go-Slow

A police officer in Mountain View, California pulls over one of Google's self-drive car for driving too slow.

17:25 16 November 2015

A police officer has pulled over one of Google’s self-drive car in Mountain View, California for driving 24mph in a 35mph zone. In an accident report, the car was described as “over-cautious.”

 

"The officer stopped the car and made contact with the operators to learn more about how it was choosing speeds along certain roadways and to educate the operators about impeding traffic," it added.

 

Google, in its own post about the incident, said: "We've capped the speed of our prototype vehicles at 25mph for safety reasons. We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighbourhood streets."

 

Google has previously received numerous complaints saying that its cars drive too polite. In September, the company confirmed that they were making necessary adjustments to make them drive "more humanistically."

 

Google’s fleet of autonomous cars are designed to religiously follow traffic rules and this causes problems when human drivers decide to do otherwise. Researchers in the field has acknowledged that the biggest challenge of this new technology is getting the autonomous cars to work well in the world of human drivers.