Slow Poke: Google's Self-Driving Car Involved in Traffic Incident

By AJ Karolczak

CHICAGO (CBS) — Question: How do police give a self-driving car a ticket when it's clogging up traffic?

On Thursday a police officer in Mountain View, California pulled over a vehicle for driving 24 mph in a 35 mph zone. He soon discovered it is part of Google's Self-Driving Car Project.

Who sat in the driver's seat? No one, though it did have a passenger monitoring the vehicle.

Rather than issue a ticket, the police officer inquired about the vehicle and reminded the passenger to stay on roads with speed limits under 35 mph.

Google had some fun with the incident, posting on the self-driving project's Google+ page. "Driving too slowly? Bet humans don't get pulled over for that too often."

The Mountain View Police Department took to Twitter to confirm the event. "Indeed it was one of our officers who pulled over a @google self driving car today."

With no ticket issued, Google proudly boasted about their perfect driving record.

"After 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving (that's the human equivalent of 90 years of driving experience), we're proud to say we've never been ticketed!"

Several Chicago-based companies are playing a role in developing driverless car technology, including creating sensors (Littelfuse) and charging systems (NuCurrent). According to Crain's, Nokia is employing several hundred people in Chicago, developing systems that allow the cars to communicate with each other.