San Francisco, California — Are they the San Francisco Police Department or amateur ghost hunters? Officers were caught on camera earlier in April attempting to perform a traffic stop on a driverless rideshare vehicle shortly before it took off on history’s lowest effort escape attempt.
The video that has been circulating social media over the past several weeks shows an officer approaching a Chevrolet Bolt for not having its headlights on, peeking in the driver-side window and finding no driver in sight.
As the officer returns to his vehicle to consult the ghost section of the police handbook, the Bolt peels out of its spot and drives through an intersection before parking again on the other side.
Fittingly enough, the incident occured on April 1 in the Richmond District of San Francisco.
The Bolt belongs to Cruise, a self-driving car service with two vehicles in its current fleet.
“Our AV (autonomous vehicle) yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued,” said the company in a Twitter post.
In another tweet, Cruise said they “work closely with SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles,” and that they have a phone number for them to call in such situations.
A maintenance team from Cruise was eventually called by police to come pick up the vehicle.
