A Cruise self-driving car got a traffic ticket—GM says it did nothing wrong

Enlarge (credit: Kevin O'Connor / KPIX)

A car from GM's self-driving car unit, Cruise, received a traffic ticket last week from a San Francisco police officer who said that a Cruise car drove uncomfortably close to a pedestrian. Cruise disputes the officer's accusation, saying that the vehicle stayed more than 10 feet away from the pedestrian.

The incident was first reported Tuesday by Jackie Ward, a reporter for the local CBS station in San Francisco. She was tipped off by a viewer, Kevin O'Connor, who snapped the above picture of the car being pulled over just a day after a fatal Uber self-driving car crash in Tempe, Arizona.

"According to data collected by Cruise, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car," Ward says. The car was in self-driving mode and "it began to continue down Harrison at 14th St. Shortly after the car accelerated, the officer pulled it over."

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