California pumps the brakes on Uber's autonomous plans after taxi runs red light

California ordered Uber to stop its self-driving taxi plans after one of its Volvos ran a red light Wednesday in San Francisco – the day the program launched.

The state's Department of Motor Vehicles said Uber did not apply for a permit for its plans to launch a small number of autonomous Volvo XC90s in San Francisco, which still had engineers as backups during the testing, according to Recode. California called it "illegal for the company to operate self-driving vehicles on public roads" without the permit and said it would pursue legal action if Uber did not immediately comply, according to a letter obtained by Recode.

Uber did not respond to Autoblog's request for comment Thursday morning, but blamed the incident on human error, a statement released to TechCrunch said. The video above is dashcam footage from a Luxor Cab, a taxi company in San Francisco. In the footage the Volvo runs through an intersection while other traffic stops. A pedestrian waits on the right side until the car passes. It's not clear why the backup driver failed to activate the car's brakes.

The San Francisco Examiner also reported on a separate instance, captured in this twitter photo, that shows an Uber Volvo stopped in the middle of an intersection against a red light.

(Not enough time to get a good shot, but...whoops!) pic.twitter.com/XK49nMF2Q4

— Annie Gaus (@AnnieGaus) December 14, 2016