California Police Ticket A Self-Driving Car (cbslocal.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Ichijo writes: A self-driving car was slapped with a ticket after police said it got too close to a pedestrian on a San Francisco street.

The self-driving car owned by San Francisco-based Cruise was pulled over for not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Cruise says its data shows the person was far away enough from the vehicle and the car did nothing wrong.... According to data collected by Cruise, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car when, while the car was in self-driving mode, it began to continue down Harrison at 14th St."

The person in the crosswalk was not injured.

Comments

The actual cross-walk rules

[doom]

The company in this case is making up a rule about the distance from the pedestrian being critical (and asking us to trust it's assessment that the ped was 10 feet away). The actually rules have nothing to do with distance:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/...

Respect the right-of-way of pedestrians. Always stop for any pedestrian crossing at corners or other crosswalks, even if the crosswalk is in the middle of the block, a [...] Remember, if a pedestrian makes eye contact with you, they are ready to cross the street. Yield to the pedestrian.

Can't their AI tell when someone is making eye-contact? Japanese photo-booths have been able to find human eyes for years now.

Re:The prosecution rests

[darkain]

A bullshit made-up story is quite a bit different than several sensors and cameras actively recording the event and presented as evidence in a case.

Re:The prosecution rests

[AvitarX]

A sworn affidavit and someone familiar with the system testifying that it is a record kept in the normal course of business.

Rules of evidence can be complex, but this is not one of those cases.

Re:Story missing important details

[Riceballsan]

I'd imagine self driving cars have to also know to pull over when the car behind them is flashing lights. Even assuming no check points, no laws being broken and police would never have reason to pull you over, they still have to pull over to get out of the way of an ambulance/police car etc....

Re:Story missing important details

[thomst]

AvitarX reminisced:

I'm pretty sure I saw a video of a Google car out on its own.

Beginning on April 2nd of this year, California's DMV has issued licenses to 50 autonomous vehicle makers allowing them to operate without a human driver aboard ...

Re:10.8 feet

[dgatwood]

All traffic must stop until there are no pedestrians.

Nope. That's not what those laws say.

• The first one defines the limit line before a pedestrian crossing, indicating where you are required to stop if you are stopping for a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
• The second one is the law that says that drivers are required to yield the right of way to pedestrians. It says nothing about continuing to wait for pedestrians for the entire time they are crossing the road — only that you must stop until such time as continuing would not pose a risk to the safety of the pedestrian.
• The third one is the law that says that pedestrians aren't allowed to step out right in front of cars. If a car is only 10 feet away, odds are, the pedestrian broke that law.