Leo Gillick
A RoboTaxi in California has been pulled over by police for pulling a U-turn, constituting a traffic violation.
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A Google company called Waymo has been running driverless taxi vehicles around certain cities. They are designed to replace human-operated taxis and abide by local driving laws. However, during a DUI operation, police noted a robotaxi pulling an illegal maneuver.
- They pulled the driverless vehicle over to find nobody behind the wheel. In theory, a driverless robotaxi shouldn’t be able to perform a traffic violation. However, it had pulled a U-turn without any regard for the keen-eyed cops right beside it.
- “During a grant-funded DUI enforcement operation, our officers observed something unusual: an autonomous vehicle made an illegal U-turn right in front of them at a light. That’s right… No driver, no hands, no clue,” they posted to social media.
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Typically, police would issue a ticket to the person inside the car before escalating the situation and emptying their state-issued firearms through the window. However, they were rather put out when they discovered there was no driver in the robotaxi. Confused and a little scared, they called their superior officer to ask what was to be done.
- With no driver to ticket, they had to go up the chain of command and find out who the robotaxi was working for when it performed a traffic violation. Whoever’s commanding the clankers to break the law needs to pay.
New Legislation: The robotaxi is owned by Waymo, a company that is a subsidiary of Google. At present, there is no way for officers to issue a ticket to a driverless vehicle. However, there is legislation going through that will allow them to ticket the company responsible.
- I have no doubt that the legislation will never go through. The state versus Google won’t even be a close to fair fight. Google will roll over them, implementing an illegal U-turn, and burn rubber into the night.
Until it goes through, or doesn’t, it’s a good way to get away with road crimes. Simply jump into the back seat of your own car and insist it’s ‘driverless’. Pin the blame on Google.
