Have you ever heard of police officers pulling over a self-driving vehicle?
A video of officers from the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) pulling over a General Motors (GM) Cruise Chevrolet Bolt seemingly due to the self-driving vehicle not having its headlights on at nighttime recently went viral, Per The Verge.
Although authorities were left confused by the event, no citation was issued.
Cruise Chevy Bolt Pull Over Details
According to The Verge's report, the video shows an SFPD officer pulling over a GM Cruise Chevrolet Bolt and trying to open the self-driving vehicle's door. After some unsuccessful attempts to open the car's door, the officer heads back to their cruiser.
It was at this point that the self-driving Cruise vehicle began to drive away in what seemed to be the perfect start to a police chase. Instead of actually running away, it pulled over and turned on its hazard lights farther down the road, right after crossing an intersection.
The officer then drove up behind the vehicle like before and hovered around it along with an accompanying officer seated in the cruiser's passenger seats. The officers were presumed to be trying to figure out how to turn its headlights back on. One of them can be seen being in contact with someone over the phone while trying to figure out how to turn on the car's headlights.
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Another SFPD officer came to the scene, but like the first two officers, they seemed to be just as confused.
The video was previously recorded by Instagram user b.rad916 on April 2 but only began to circulate and go viral after 9to5 Mac Publisher Seth Weintraub shared it on his personal Twitter account on April 9, per Engadget.
Cruise's Response On The Pull Over
Cruise spokesperson Aaron Mclear, in a reply to The Verge's inquiry regarding the incident, said the vehicle in the video drove farther down the road to find a safer location to pull over in, which is something that wouldn't go down so smoothly if a person, not an AI, was driving the vehicle.
Mclear also added that SFPD officers did not pull the vehicle over for not having its headlights on and that Cruise has since fixed the issue.
A post from Cruise's official Twitter page addressing the incident mentioned that an SFPD officer contacted the company's personnel and that no citation was issued.
"We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact without vehicles, including a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this," Cruise's tweet said.
Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, previously opened its driverless cars to the public on February 1, 2022, per company CEO Kyle Vogt's blog post on Cruise's official website. However, the company uses these cars as a shuttle service for its San Francisco-based employees since 2017, according to a separate report from The Verge.
The Chevy-Bolt-turned-Cruise vehicle could have been a traffic hazard as it was driving around the city without its headlights on at night, which is a concerning issue if Cruise doesn't fix it. Cruise vehicles are only allowed to drive on the streets from 10 PM to 6 AM, which is a period that makes having functional headlights a necessity.
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