A Google small neighorbood electric vehicle (aka golf cart) was recently pulled over while traveling on an extremely busy main thoroughfare in the Silicon Valley and a cute story is forming in the media about a cop who pulls over a car with no driver for no reason. What happened you ask? The car was driving slowly, 24 mph (40 kmh) in a 35 mph (55 kmh) and had a chain of other cars behind it being held up. The Google team even acts as if this is some kind of badge of honor: Driving too slowly? Bet humans don't get pulled over for that too often.
Yes, well, they do in fact get pulled over exactly for things like this. California has a law about holding up traffic on a highway. California has a law about driving at speeds so low they are dangerous because differences with other vehicles are too high. None of those laws were broken here as the Google vehicle was never actually operating outside of the law. However being inside the law isn't what we should be analyzing.
When was the last time you saw a golf cart holding up traffic on a major street in a major city? If you saw that would you think it was cute? What kind of jerk would think that was appropriate then respond that its fine because driving that slow makes things safer. The Google car and worse, the Google team. Yay?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @04:05PM
"These vehicles in the news today are PROTOTYPES used for DEVELOPMENT and TESTING."
Being developed in one of the area's WORST places to drive, thanks to Google Cars, Google Busses, and the G-Tards that
crown into a once great area to live in.
I'm counting the days when I can GTF out of this Google-made hell hole.
They should just rename Mountain View to Googleville. It's a company-owned town now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2015, @10:24AM
So they should just test these things on some empty stretch of road in the mid-west, to avoid inconveniencing anyone? Great idea! Except for the fact you need to be able to test in real-world conditions, which also includes those worst places to drive, otherwise the test is meaningless.