Driverless car stopped for driving the wrong way

Autonomous vehicle technology is evolving but is still far from perfect, giving rise to incidents that are sometimes comical, and sometimes alarming.

A recent example comes from Phoenix, Arizona, where a police officer intercepted a driverless Jaguar I-Pace from Waymo that had taken the wrong lane and was driving in the opposite direction.

As he approached the vehicle and saw the driver's window roll down, he realized that no one was behind the wheel. However, via the on-board telecommunication system, he was able to speak to a Waymo operator, informing him of the infraction committed by the vehicle.

The video doesn't show the clumsiness of the driverless cab, but we do learn that the whole thing happened near a construction zone. The police officer could do nothing more, stating in his report that he was "unable to give a ticket to a computer", according to AZCentral.

According to the latter, Waymo later responded by mentioning that the vehicle in question had been "misled by inconsistent signage" and blocked for some 30 seconds, preventing it from getting back into the right lane. Nevertheless, any other driver who had performed such a maneuver and chosen to drive in the opposite direction would inevitably have been fined.

Last fall, our Car Guide reporter Dominic Boucher experienced a Waymo autonomous cab in San Francisco, California.