Self-driving cars have arrived in San Francisco. This sometimes puts the local police to the test: Im February this year tried about a police officer driverless car stop it from moving by yelling at it with a torch in hand.
“No, you stay!“, i.e. “No, you stay”, the policeman ordered in a video recorded by his bodycam (view here). The incident happened, according to local media “Mission Local” already on February 9. Why did the police officer do one flare ignited is not known but adds to the effect.
Autonomous taxi failed to recognize danger
The starting point of the incident was a fire in San Francisco’s Sunset District, to which the fire department and police were called. As the Fire department was in the process of laying her fire-fighting lines, the taxi service’s autonomous vehicle arrived Waymo in the game. The police tried to prevent the car from driving over the fire lines.
“We have a small problem. An autonomous vehicle – Waymo – drives slowly and close to one of the fire extinguishing lines,” says the police officer over the radio. “Is there a way to contact the vendor that can disable this vehicle? I don’t trust this AI.”
The Waymo car was then deactivated and driven away from the intersection. When asked, the taxi service said it was already working on teaching its cars to take instructions from emergency personnel to follow.
Not the first incident
It wasn’t the first time the San Francisco Police Department had dealt with a self-driving taxi had to deal with. A vehicle belonging to Waymo’s competitor was stopped last year Cruise viral. The taxi was stopped because it was driving at night without its headlights on. However, when the policeman looked into the car on the driver’s side, he was perplexed.
