Properly, it undoubtedly wasn’t consuming and driving.
An Arizona cop acquired fairly the shock when he just lately pulled over a white Jaguar SUV for an alleged slew of reckless actions close to a building zone — and the automobile turned out to be a driverless Waymo taxi with nobody inside.
Newly launched body-cam footage from the Phoenix Police Division exhibits how the officer chased down the automobile close to Seventh Avenue and Osborn Street on June 19 after it allegedly drove into oncoming site visitors, ran a pink gentle and “FREAKED OUT,” in line with dispatch information obtained by AZ Central.
The officer’s confusion is audible after he goes as much as the driving force’s facet of the automobile — which is designed to drag over when it detects emergency lights and sirens — and sees that the automobile he stopped doesn’t have a driver.
The driving force’s window on the automobile owned by Waymo — which is run by Google’s father or mother firm Alphabet, Inc. — rolls down.
The automobile’s audio system then connects the officer with an organization consultant, and the cop informs them of the issue.
“So your automobile right here drove into oncoming lanes of site visitors,” the officer informs the corporate.
The rep responds, “OK, I’ll go forward and check out that proper now.”
The cop provides, “Yeah, there’s like just a little little bit of a building space, and it went on opposing lanes of site visitors, which is actual unhealthy.”
One other officer can seen at one level popping by to ask what’s going on — and in addition seems visibly stunned see the automobile is empty.
He gasps in shock, too, when he learns that the driverless automobile veered into the oncoming site visitors lane.
A Waymo help staffer ultimately arrives to help the primary responding cop.
Phoenix officers later humorously famous that the incident ended with out additional want for motion, because the officer was “UNABLE TO ISSUE CITATION TO COMPUTER,” in line with the dispatch information.
Waymo stated in a press release that the automobile had “encountered inconsistent building signage” throughout the journey, inflicting it to maneuver into an oncoming lane of site visitors.
The automobile was then “blocked” from shifting again into the proper lane for about 30 seconds earlier than the officer pulled it over, the corporate stated.
Phoenix is among the few cities within the US that enables autonomous autos to drive on its roads, with Waymo cleared to function even within the Arizona capital as of 2024.
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