That section of the vehicle code says, emphasis added: "No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of a grade, or in compliance with law." https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c...

If Google's self-driving cars are limited by law to 25mph, and the car was not exceeding 25mph, then it was "in compliance with the law" and 22400(a) doesn't apply. It would be allowed to impede or block traffic, even if we human drivers would really prefer it to be going 45mph.

Sounds like Google's decision to me. Either way, it's not a highway, so that section seems irrelevant. And "in compliance with the law" is quite a broad redirect.

http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/rulings/lsv/lsv.html

Vehicles under 3000lbs and with a max speed of 20-25mph (like golf carts) do not have to meet the safety requirements of passenger vehicles.

This wikipedia page sums up the situation pretty well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle

There are similar laws preventing mopeds and other motor-driven bicycles from entering highways; the laws prevent the vehicle from maintaining highway speeds and therefore they are forbidden from entering the highway.

A highway, as defined in the CVC, is the generic term for any public road on which the Vehicle Code applies, even if it's one lane each way: '360. “Highway” is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street.'

As for the speed limiter, a 25 MPH hard limit is ridiculous unless they were limiting usage to streets with a 25MPH limit.

(IANAL) "Highway" means road or street[1]:

> 360. "Highway" is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street.

(I've never actually heard highway used in common speech that way; only in the vehicle code, but that I think is what would count here.) The article also seems to indicate this was El Camino Real, which is also CA State Route 82.

[1]: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d1/36...

It should also be here[2], but that page is blank for some odd reason.

[2]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayexpand...

[1] https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/This_Land.htm

at first, I thought maybe you had the old link (it moved last year, but they left the old one up, broken)

    That MV police blog post says the traffic officer stopped the car to "educate the operators about impeding traffic per 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code."

This car was engineered by people representing Google with the intent to allow it to operate completely autonomously.

Can we have at least one discussion forum where the notion of corporate personhood isn't abused into idiocy like this? Maybe here on a discussion board run by Y Combinator, a company with the mission of helping to create new corporations?

Of course it wouldn't.

In most European countries there is a minimum speed requirement when driving on thr motorway (usually between 60 - 80 km/h), and sometimes there are even lane-specific speed limits (e.g. left lane requires at least 110 km/h). All that is only relevant if the traffic actually allows you to go that fast of course.

"360. "Highway" is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street."

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c...

"22400. (a) No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of a grade, or in compliance with law."

Yes, shocking. (Also, El Camino is a State Route, I'll let you look that one up.)

My Hanomag A-L 28 is a maximum speed in the papers of 78 km/h. As such I am allowed on the Autobahn, even that I am driving only 50 km/h or sometimes 40 km/h on a hill. Because each hill does slow down a Hanomag considerably.

"360. "Highway" is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street."

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&gr...

Here in Sweden, highways are off limits if the vehicle may not legally be driven faster than (i think) 45 kmph.

I think that usage is mostly West Coast. :)

Everywhere else, I've only heard "highway" or "interstate."

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_79....

In common usage highway is still sort of reserved for larger connectors, road and street are used for local stuff.

If 24 mph is too slow for that particular road or neighbourhood, then the speed limit should be 45+ mph, not 35. Clearly the average citizen is already driving 45+, or the "slow" wouldn't even be noticeable.

Edit: wait, this is even more absurd. The traffic violation quoted is https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c... which mentions "highway". 35 mph or 56 km/h is residential street speed, not highway speed. This whole thing makes no sense to me.

It's absolutely too slow.

Majority of people drive at or slightly below the speed limit. Driving that far under causes people to start behaving irrationally resulting in lots of lane changes/tailgaiting etc. This can be dangerous when lots of cars are doing it.

For my entire driving experience, from the North East of the US to Northern California, to specificially the portion of the road this car was driving on, this is false. People drive, very reliably, ~5mph over the speed limit. When you get to 35/40+ mph speed limits, ~10 over isn't uncommon, ~15 for people going uncommonly fast. I can't recall the last time I drove under a speed limit (minus exceptional road/traffic/weather conditions) and I'm slower than most drivers I encounter.

More generally, urban streets, even arterial streets like El Camino, would really benefit from more strictly enforced speed limits, and lower limits wherever possible. A pedestrian or cyclist hit by a car going 20–25 mph is likely to sustain only minor injuries. A pedestrian or cyclist hit by a car going 35+ mph will probably die. Drivers also have dramatically less reaction time and much worse road awareness at 35mph compared to 20–25 mph (and realistically the speed of traffic is probably 40–45 mph on a road with 35 as the posted limit).

Cars are scary killing machines, one of the leading causes of death, and drivers are often poorly trained, distracted, or just idiots. The slower and more carefully they drive in urban environments, the better.

I’d love it if armies of 25 mph self-driving cars were constantly cruising around town, restricting other drivers to a safer speed. If they could supplant the taxi/uber/lyft industry whose drivers speed along my residential street at 55+ mph every night from 12–6 AM, that would also be dandy.

This is one of those examples of an explanation rather than a justification.

If someone else is going slow, that's no excuse to start acting like an idiot, and if you do and you get in an accident, that's on you, not the slow driver.

"(b) If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute prima facie evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of subdivision (a) of this section."

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&gr...

Says nothing about limited-access divided highways.

On a limited-access divided highway there are far fewer reasons, limited only to emergencies, and the left lane can be legitimately considered to be the fast lane.

On the other hand, tailgating is always extremely dangerous, even when the speeds involved are relatively low.

If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.

I'm sorry, but I can't accept that. Police need to start focusing on safety instead of revenue generation. I don't care what some idiot is doing, if you're tailgating them at highway speeds in the lane next to me you're putting us all at risk just so you can get somewhere 3 minutes faster. I don't care if you're upset about the length between the car ahead of you and the one ahead of it. Cutting them off in the lane next to me and nearly causing a reck is insane. We have to stop just accepting that being an asshole is okay and start holding people accountable.

If you are two seconds behind, they could come to a near stop and you can crash into them at full speed.

If you drove with zero distance between the your bumper and the car in front of you, if they brake hard you will have no impact at all.

This is why it's safe for train cars to tailgate.

In my view, autonomous cars will likely one day form trains for higher traffic density and throughput while remaining safe.

autonomous cars can form trains because they can react orders of magnitude faster than a human can to suddenly changing driving conditions.

In Germany the minimum safety distance is taught in driving classes and severe violations of it will be fined like any other reckless behaviour.

The rule of thumb is "as much of a distance as you pass within two seconds". This scales wonderfully with speed and easily covers the reaction time and breaking duration.

Sure, in urban traffic the typical safety distance is usually less than a vehicle length, but with both tailgating and cutting in on someone constituting reckless driving offences, that's not a huge problem.

You can also be fined for hogging lanes on a motorway, thankfully.

Part of driver's education is being able to adjust your speed to the conditions and safely maintain the recommended speed on the Autobahn when possible. If you are too scared to drive at such speeds or unable to do so safely, you won't pass.

Of course we still have plenty of drivers who are afraid of driving on the Autobahn (often because they don't do it regularly enough once they have the driver's license) and especially the elderly can be in denial about the limits of their actual abilities and make up for their inability to drive safely by driving more slowly (which isn't necessarily any safer).

[0] 1mph/(9.8m/s2) in seconds, according to Google, assuming friction coefficient of 1

1. https://goo.gl/maps/WdfhEAGBsDP2

It's also not too uncommon to cross a non-motorway 70MPH dual carriageway, when walking outside a city.

I don't know if our roads are safer for pedestrians than the USA. They're considerably safer in total, but it seems difficult to compare the US and UK for pedestrians in particular because of the differing laws and distribution of methods of travel. However, they're probably at least in the same ball park, despite our more laissez faire attitude toward pedestrian-road interaction.

The A417 between Cirencester and Cheltenham is a dual carriageway that has pedestrian footpaths across it.

Imagine driving at 70mph toward this:

350 yard warning: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,...

actual crossing: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,...

350 yards at 70 MPH is, I think, 10 seconds.

Of course, the County wants to reserve a lane for bus use only now...

I wonder how well the self driving car copes with these.

In fact, I wonder how well the self driving car copes with an overly aggressive driver cutting in front and slamming on their brakes just to piss you off. I guess it would handle that better than my mothers elderly neighbour who recently didn't manage to brake in time and hit the twerp, writing off her vehicle in the process. Of course, it was counted as her fault since she struck the car in front..

You really think Google can't afford a Death Ray in each car?

I guess it depends on officer mood and how long the car was safely in your lane before the breaking. Mostly officer mood.

Still, there are lots of completely legal sudden braking activities that would cause a collision over 10% of the time. People don't actually drive totally defensively all the time.

Also Regensdorf is really pretty busy and all you're doing by going slow is pissing people off. If you want to go that slow, that's what side streets are for.

It's also very rare for slow drivers to get ticketed.

Holding up a line of cars that would otherwise be driving too fast is not going to be the cause of an accident. The cause of the accident would be the driver who was driving too fast!

Seriously, this stuff is to be determined from top down, not from perspective of individual self-interested drivers with zero context, little responsiblity and no interest of ensuring optimum flow.

Also, the general culture of aggression and disregard for law is something that is not healthy for neither society, nor economy.

Yes, it is. So what? Democracy is not a silver bullet. Some problems it solves well, others it can't tackle.

> Sometimes the law from top down is incorrect.

Sometimes it is. And sometimes it isn't. I argue this is a case where top-down approach is the right one.

> The experiences of stakeholders matters.

I think health and life of innocent third parties should matter more.

I'm not suggesting that the non drivers should always get their way though. There are roads where cars are allowed to be driven faster than this, and roads where pedestrians are not permitted.

In other words, that would only work for a traffic system which only moves one way, linearly, and has zero branches. Out there in meatspace, things are...a little bit more complex. Intersections and buses and trucks and pedestrians, oh my.