It’s been a little over two months since Cruise started letting people of San Francisco ride his driverless robo-taxis, and one of his cars has already had a run-in with police. In a video originally posted to Instagram last weekend, the user captures the awkward — and somewhat hilarious — interaction between San Francisco police and the autonomous vehicle after it was stopped for not turning on its lights.
After stopping the cruiser-turned Chevy Bolt, a cop goes to his window, tries (unsuccessfully) to open the door, and heads back to his squad car. The autonomous vehicle begins to drive off in what at first seems like the perfect start for a police chase, but then stops and continues its perils at a point further down the road. The police pull up behind the vehicle one more time, get out, and then hover around the vehicle while presumably trying to figure out how to turn the headlights back on.
As Cruise spokesman Aaron Mclear explained to The Verge, the autonomous vehicle wasn’t pulling away to evade police — it was trying to find a safer place to stop, a move most human drivers don’t easily get away with. Mclear also confirmed that the SFPD stopped the vehicle because the headlights were not on and says Cruise has since fixed the problem.
“The vehicle dodged the police car and then proceeded to the nearest safe spot for traffic control,” Mclear said. “An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no subpoena was issued. We work closely with the SFPD to interact with our vehicles and have a dedicated phone number they can call in such situations.”
Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, uses LIDAR technology to power the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles. The company has been using the cars to commute its San Francisco-based employees since 2017, but has only just opened a waiting list for the city’s general population.
We still don’t know exactly what made the Cruise vehicle work without its headlights. Maybe the car’s automatic headlight function was disabled or couldn’t see the darkness around it. Either way, it’s a bit worrying. Cruise ships are only allowed to operate from 10pm to 6am, which of course makes headlights pretty important.
In 2018, a self-driving Uber hit and killed a pedestrian crossing the street on her bike in Tempe, Arizona. Subsequent investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that Uber turned off Volvo’s factory emergency braking system to prevent any interaction with Uber’s self-driving software, but it’s unclear if this contributed to the crash.