Here’s what happens when cops pull over a driverless Cruise vehicle

Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

It has been over two months since Cruise started letting the people of San Francisco catch rides on its robotaxis, and one of its cars already had a run-in with police. In a video that was posted to the social media site last weekend, the user captured an interaction between the San Francisco Police Department and the vehicle after it was pulled over for not having its lights on.

After stopping the Chevy Bolt-turned-Cruise vehicle, a police officer tries to open the door of the vehicle but is unsuccessful. The vehicle begins to drive away in a way that seems like a perfect start to a police chase, but then pulls over and puts its hazard on at a point farther down the road. Police drive up behind the vehicle, get out of the car, and then hover around the vehicle as they try to figure out how to turn the headlights back on.

The vehicle was trying to find a safer location to pull over in, a move that most human drivers can't get away with. Mclear confirmed that the vehicle was pulled over by the SFPD for not having its headlights on, and that Cruise fixed the issue.

The officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued after the vehicle yielded to the police car. We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles and have a dedicated phone number for them to call.

Cruise uses LIDAR technology to power its vehicles. The company has been using the cars to shuttle around its San Francisco-based employees since 2017, but only just opened a waiting list to taxi the city's general population.

We don't know what caused the vehicle to operate without headlights. Maybe the car's automatic headlights feature wasn't working because it wasn't detecting the darkness around it. It is a bit concerning. It's pretty important that headlights are on when cruising vehicles are only authorized to drive from 10PM to 6AM.

A pedestrian was struck and killed by a self-driving vehicle in Arizona. It's not clear whether the crash was caused by the Volvo factory emergency braking system being turned off.