Police: How do I ticket a driverless car?

Two officers in San Bruno, California, a suburb of San Francisco, were checking for drunken drivers last weekend when they saw a car make an illegal U-turn right in front of them. But it wasn't a drunken driver. It was a driverless Waymo taxi.

- MICHAEL LEVENSON LAUREL ROSENHALL

A police officer looks into a driverless Waymo taxi after pulling it over for making an illegal U-turn in San Bruno, California, last Saturday.

The officers turned on the flashing lights on their police car and pulled behind the Waymo, which automatically came to a stop. But the officers could do little else other than tell a Waymo representative what had happened.

"Since there was no human driver, a ticket couldn't be issued," the San Bruno Police Department said in a statement on Facebook that included a photo of an officer peering into the empty driver's seat of the taxi. "(Our citation books don't have a box for 'robot')."

The bizarre traffic stop pointed to the challenge law enforcement officials face in trying to ticket autonomous vehicles for moving violations that would be routine if a human driver were behind the wheel.

Last year, Gov Gavin Newsom of California signed a law authorising the police to issue "notices of autonomous vehicle noncompliance" when they see driverless cars breaking local traffic laws. But the law did not specify any penalties associated with those notices and it does not take effect until July 1, 2026.