A situation that attracted many people to discuss a real-life scenario of a driverless car being pulled over by cops. Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, launched its driverless robot taxis in San Francisco, two months ago. The company faced a critical headlight issue after the sunset. The incident got noticed by the San Francisco Police department and immediate action was taken.
Take a look at the video,
Welcome to the future. Cop pulls over driverless car (because no lights?) Then Cruise goes on the lamb. (via https://t.co/mtmsIeOAUP) pic.twitter.com/ecQ5xXuSnS
— Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) April 10, 2022
The police failed to open the vehicle door or find a solution to turn on the headlights.
Later on, the incident got clarified by the Cruise spokesperson Aaron Mclear to The Verge, “The vehicle yielded to the police car, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop,” Mclear said. “An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued. We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles and have a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this.”
Cruise is using the Robo Taxis or the cars for shuttling around San Francisco since 2017. The reason behind the unfortunate incident of failing to comply to switch on the headlights features in the darkness somewhat raised the eyebrows. the cruise vehicle is authorized only to drive from 10 PM to 6 AM. And if the automatic headlight is not working, it’s pretty disastrous.
In my opinion, even though the situation was funny but gave a future look, at what will happen if the road is full of AVs. As the cops were chasing the AV, they failed to understand what the AV was doing?
Lack of responsive interaction with the AV. The vehicle started driving down, thinking that was the best at that scenario, without clarification, showing a chaotic scenario.
Also, for the Robot taxi, parking safely as stated by the Cruise Spokesperson, that’s what it was doing, was more important than even responding to the cop, which shows a wishy-washy situation.
Safe parking is needed but when a legal entity took you under command, that should be a high priority at that moment than any other activity.
The task of understanding a fault scenario of a car without any interaction seems disastrous. Are we certain, that the situation will lead to a better road safety drive with the AVs, or will it add more confusion with no proper communication? Should we just let go? Or it should be a punishable offense for failing to switch on the headlight? Can it be considered not dangerous?