Autonomous anything should not be subject to human laws.
Tomorrow’s headline: Cops Shoots Self-Driving Car When Car Fails to Respond to Lawful Orders and Multiple Tazings
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Such laws are still motivated by the assumption that whatever exists, there has to be someone controlling it. It is concern trolling as drive to acquisition.
Robotech future headline: Self driving car shoots then tases cop after police officer questions it why it was driving like a 90 year old man without his glasses.
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Just wanted to echo your entire post. “Why did they pull it over if there was no violation” was my first thought as well. I understand there are minimum speed limits on most highways (45 MPH I believe), but in a presumably residential or rural area where the speed limit is 35, 25 MPH does not seem at all unreasonable to me.
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Minimum Speed Law. 22400. (a) No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of a grade, or in compliance with law.
So, they pulled the car over because it was going “at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic”, but because no person was driving, there was no violation, and they had to let the car go.
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No ticket, huh. . . big surprise.
White car, white privilege.
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But a 35 MPH zone is unlikely to be a highway.
Like I said, the usual “speed limit” is actually a maximum limit. It is posted, because people shouldn’t need to guess what it is. If people feel a need for a minimum limit, then they need to post this as well.
I wasn’t being entirely serious…
However, the second part does say:
(b) Whenever the Department of Transportation determines on the basis of an engineering and traffic survey that slow speeds on any part of a state highway consistently impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, the department may determine and declare a minimum speed limit below which no person shall drive a vehicle, except when necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law, when appropriate signs giving notice thereof are erected along the part of the highway for which a minimum speed limit is established.
Also, California Vehicle Code:
“Highway” is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street.
Laws about impeding ‘normal’ flow are stupidly ambiguous. If you are driving in the HOV lanes in WA, you can be ticketed for holding up people, even if you are driving at the limit. You can also be ticketed for exceeding that limit.
Basically, you can get a ticket for whatever, if the police office wants to give you one.
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I saw one of Google’s cars at the Computer History Museum a couple months ago. I don’t know how old it was, but that version had both a steering wheel and a giant red button on the console for the “driver” to slam when they needed to take control.
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Many, many years ago, I was driving my grandfather’s 1964 Ford Falcon van home from an event in Salt Lake City on I-15. Soon after getting on the freeway, a Highway Patrol vehicle began to follow me. I was a little paranoid, because it was 2am and the van’s speedometer didn’t work, so I maintained what I thought was a steady speed all the way to Provo, about 35 miles south. When I got off the exit to home, the blue lights came on and I pulled over. The officer checked my license and registration, and then asked the regular questions about drinking (which I hadn’t been doing). Finally, he asked why I had driven very carefully for 35 miles at 50mph (remember that this was when the limit was 55mph). I told him I was driving that way because there was a cop behind me. He laughed, and let me go.
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I think the prototypes have them, but there was an article about how the final product wouldn’t: http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2015/03/19/googles-gargantuan-push-for-cars-with-no-steering-wheel-by-2020/.
When I read that, I immediately thought of this:
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And give them a prize?
I’ve got kids – I’d LOVE to see somebody doing less than 40 on our posted-30 street.
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The car was driving 25MPH because that was the maximum speed it was allowed to go.
The Google cars (the funny looking ones, not the modified Prius) are classified as “Neighborhood Electric Vehicles” (NEVs). Low speed vehicles restricted to streets with a maximum speed limit of 35 or 45 mph. Car dealers cannot legally sell the vehicles if they’re able to go faster than 25 mph.
Most are little more than golf carts with turn signals and brake lights added. NEVs have been around for a while, so this sort of stop has no doubt happened a few times before. The lack of a driver as a new twist after the fact.
When the ZENN was disallowed on the road in most of Canada, the idiots on social media declared “OMG OMG Canada has banned electric cars!!!” In reality what it did not allow was golf carts - even if like the ZENN they looked a bit more car-like - on the road mixed in with high speed traffic. NEVs do not have the crash testing and safety features of regular automobiles.
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Which is a fine movie to reference. I approve. Also i’m still waiting for the day cars have safety foam.
I’ve got no argument for you on going 40 in a residential 30 being bad. But the people I see going 25 in a 35 on a commercial road are often doing so because they’re on their phones or they’re otherwise distracted.
Thanks for this. Must people don’t understand that impeding traffic is an actual offense. I once had a discussion with a friend of a family member, who is an attorney, and he told me that it’s his right to drive 60 mph in the far left lane of a 65 mph freeway. And I told him that he could get a ticket for impeding the traffic flow. This isn’t just a theory; a female CHP motorcycle officer told me she’s had to ticket slow drivers who refuse to yield to faster drivers.
I remember the days when there were signs telling slower traffic to move over to the right lane. (Sigh.) These days I drive to the right because all the slower drivers ride in far left non-carpool lane.
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Wait a minute…are you really saying that the inconvenience caused by people driving too slow is really “as bad” as the increased risk of accidents and fatalities associated with people driving too fast?
I read through those comments…I didn’t see any evidence presented that driving too slow does anything put make people late. Late != dead/injured, by any metric.
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Does this work for you as a legitimate source?
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