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from the putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt dept.
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: 2, Informative) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 14 2015, @07:56PM
to call El Camino in Mountain View a highway is to misuse the term
Ah that is not an association I had intended to cause though the paragraph is pretty ambiguous. It was an incomplete description of my thought process. Your analysis even demonstrates it technically is a highway though functionally is not which I agree is accurate. I was intending to draw attention to the law regarding yielding to traffic on a highway when N cars are being held up as it is essentially minimum courtesy encoded in legislation.
This really *seems* to be a "nothing happening here" story.
I disagree which is why I decided to frame my submission in terms of jerks on the road to draw some attention to the disconnect between robots and non-yielding slowpokes. I haven't lived in the area for about 8 years now, long before NEV was on anyone's radar. Is it common to find NEV on El Camino Real? If so, then this is not a big deal. If the robot car isn't programmed to avoid spots and situations that humans do that is a point, discovered during testing, that should be improved.
It would have been good for me to include this part [mountainviewpoliceblog.com] in the original summary:
This afternoon a Mountain View Police Department traffic officer noticed traffic backing up behind a slow moving car traveling in the eastbound #3 lane on El Camino Real, near Rengstorff Ave.
I can't entirely figure out what happened either but I'll give the officer some benefit of the doubt. The car would not have even been on his mind if something wasn't going on that was out of the ordinary. I don't think the media draws attention to non-optimized routing and focuses more on feelings about the situation. Shaking that up sure unleashed a foaming at the mouth can of worms that converted me into a tail-gaiting jerk that is running bicyclists off the road. In reality the dumb asses of the world tailgate me like crazy while I try to maintain safe following distances and give others respect on the road.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 15 2015, @07:47PM
If that's the car I think it was, the police officer could tell at a distance that it was a Google car. The things look like toys. This was an intentional design choice on Google's part, as they wanted to cars to look non-threatening. And I suspect some of the cars lined up behind it (at least the closest one) were lined up precisely BECAUSE it was an obviously Google self-driving car. They wanted to watch it.
What I suspect of causing the traffic jam was drivers passing it slowing down to get a good look at it. This happens whenever something interesting is happening along the roadway. Gawkers at accidents are a common cause of traffic jams, commonly even more than the accident itself. (Not if it blocks a lane or two, of course.) And I suspect the officer of pulling it over because HE wanted to get a good look at it. (Naturally, this would not be the reason in the report, and the listed reason is a reasonable justifier, so I may be wrong.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.