Driverless car parked in San Francisco baffles police

San Francisco:

San Francisco police had an unprecedented problem recently when an officer stopped a car that was driving at night without headlights, only to discover that no one was inside.

It turned out that the car was self-driving, and the meeting with the police officer was filmed in a movie by a passerby, who posted the footage on social media.

The video, which shows confused officers circling the car and staring out its window for several minutes, was shared so widely that Cruise, the company that owns the car, responded on Twitter to explain what happened.

She said the self-driving car “surrendered to the police car, then pulled up to the nearest safe place to the traffic stop, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued.”

In the footage, while the police are searching the parked car, someone can be heard chanting, “There’s no one in it, he’s crazy!”

A police spokesman said that after the police stopped the car, a maintenance team took control of it.

Cruz explained that the headlights were turned off due to human error.

Founded in 2013, Cruise has developed software that allows cars to drive themselves completely autonomously.

The American company General Motors owns the majority of the shares in the company, which is valued at more than 30 billion dollars thanks to the investments of giants such as Microsoft, Honda and Walmart.

Since February, Cruise has crossed a major threshold in allowing individuals to book free rides on the streets of San Francisco in its self-driving cars.

Californians also come regularly via automated taxis from Waymo, a self-driving subsidiary of Google.

These camera-clad vehicles take passengers wherever they want, with a driver present but not touching the steering wheel or pedals.

(This story has not been edited by the NDTV crew and is automatically generated from a shared feed.)