A police officer pulls over a Waymo Driverless car. What should he do now?

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Photo: ThisIsButter | Facebook

A police officer stopped a Waymo self-driving car in Phoenix, Arizona. He noticed the car crossing into the opposite lane, turned on his lights and siren, and followed it.

You might expect robot taxis to break down less often. They don’t get tired, drink and drive, or get angry. But their systems are far from perfect and can sometimes be more dangerous than human drivers. A video posted to social media confirms that.

Robotaxi is a Jaguar I-Pace with self-driving capabilities. It is clear, however, that the system sometimes fails, and errors and faults can lead to accidents. However, this is a situation that the police stopped before it got worse.

The officer’s body camera footage shows him getting out of his patrol car and walking to the unmanned vehicle. He approaches the Jaguar and sees that there is no one inside. Despite the offence, he could not issue a ticket, and there was no driver to punish.

The Phoenix Police Department says the driverless taxi was spotted crossing into the opposite lane in a highly dangerous maneuver in a construction zone near Seventh Avenue and Osborn Road, before running a red light. Dispatch records show the car “panicked“That’s what the policeman wrote in capital letters.

When the self-driving car stops and the officer approaches, the driver’s window rolls down. But there’s no one to talk to. Eventually, he speaks to a Waymo Driver Support employee through the car’s on-board communications system. The operator says they’ll check the information.Your car was traveling east in the westbound lane.“- explains the officer.

The incident ended with the officer writing:you can’t issue a ticket to a computer.“The incidents were reported by AZCentral. The publication contacted Waymo, but the company claimed that Jaguar”inconsistent construction signage encountered“and for about 30 seconds he couldn’t get back into the right lane.

The story matches the one the police officer gave. But regardless of the reason, the maneuver was still dangerous for other road users.

The current regulations do not mention that autonomous cars receive tickets. The companies coordinating the robotaxi also do not receive any fines for the way their cars behave in traffic.

Last month, Waymo was forced to issue a citation when one of its robotics vehicles crashed into a telephone pole in Phoenix, Arizona. There was no passenger on board, but the autonomous vehicle was en route to a pickup location.

In addition, other robotaxi operators have experienced dangerous situations in the past few months. For example, more than a dozen robotaxi owned by Cruise caused a massive traffic jam in Austin, Texas, in September 2023.

All of them, without a driver on board, stopped on the street in West Campus and were unable to drive away. Cruise explained at the time that the heavy pedestrian and vehicle traffic caused the prototype autonomous vehicles to get tangled up in the street. The cars were programmed to stop as the safest course of action in a dangerous situation, and that’s exactly what they did.

Cruise operators finally managed to remotely get the cars out of the jam, and they drove away autonomously.