Will regulatory approval of Self Drive include override by the State?

[Pdub2015]

Since this appears to be a day of both mild and wild speculation, I wanted to make sure we covered this base as well: do you think it's possible that in some jurisdictions, regulations that allow Self Drive might include active "backdoors" or other ways for authorized parties (i.e. State Police or Highway Patrol) to override and/or immobilize a self driver? Or ALL self drivers?

Other than the 1984 aspect, it might not be a bad idea...

 

[Snerruc]

Almost guaranteed to happen.

 

[Canuck]

I'm not so sure about that. Just because you can use a device to aid in committing a crime doesn't automatically entitle authorities to a backdoor. I'm trying to think of examples that would justify it over a current Tesla fleeing from a crime with a driver, that police can't access to even trace, without the owner's, or Tesla's, consent to access it.

Let's say there's an armed robbery and the thieves put the stolen goods in self-driving vehicle, or worse, terrorists use one to carry a bomb. Are we going to give access to authorities to backdoors to all our cars over this potential threat? The car with the cash can be followed as if it had a driver, and a suicide bomber can use a vehicle now and there's many deranged people willing to that without a self driving car aiding them.

I'm not so sure it's guaranteed to happen. My guess is that will take a Court order, like with a locked Apple iPhone that unlocked can potentially prevent terrorists attacks. I can't see a difference but perhaps others can.

 

[mblakele]

Think about situations where authorized agents can instruct you as a human driver, and by law you are required to obey. Now project those to highly-automated vehicles, and remember that at times there may not be a driver in the car at all.

• Emergency vehicles must be able to instruct vehicles to pull over and let them by.
• Police must be able to pull over vehicles. This might not be common with HAV, but suppose the vehicle experiences a malfunction that the vehicle doesn't detect, making it unsafe or causing it to drive in an area blocked to traffic.
• Police must be able to run traffic breaks. This might be possible without vehicle cooperation, and police will have to handle mixed situations. But traffic breaks would be much easier and safer for everyone if there was an explicit protocol.

Authorities and vehicle manufacturers will have to cooperate to design and implement these features in such a way that they work, but won't be subject to undue abuse. That won't be trivial, and we won't want to have multiple different standards on one land mass. So it'll probably happen at the national and continental level.

Depending on local climate, legal and otherwise, it may be possible for a human driver to override these features if one is present. For example if your car says "pulling over for law enforcement" but you don't see any law enforcement, then you might — depending on circumstances — want to override that.

 

[jeffreys]

I suspect a "Pull out of the traffic lane when emergency lights appear at the rear or in front" will cover many of these use cases. The part I'm worried about, as a New England resident, is the ability of these vehicles to respond to hand-control of traffic by off-duty police earning their overtime at local businesses. Dozens of local businesses employ this technique to ensure that their employees can exit their parking lots in a timely manner, and many local intersections that really should have light controls instead have manual police control during certain hours.

 

[jya*]

I suspect a "Pull out of the traffic lane when emergency lights appear at the rear or in front" will cover many of these use cases. The part I'm worried about, as a New England resident, is the ability of these vehicles to respond to hand-control of traffic by off-duty police earning their overtime at local businesses. Dozens of local businesses employ this technique to ensure that their employees can exit their parking lots in a timely manner, and many local intersections that really should have light controls instead have manual police control during certain hours.

And that's IF you can pull out of traffic. That's almost never the case on my commute- there is simply no "extra lane" of space, so sometimes the right thing to do is not to try to pull over but to keep the traffic flowing. Also you often can't see the lights because they're around a corner. You can hear the sirens well before any visual. Perhaps they also need microphones to process the audio signals that would alert a human driver.

 

[malcolm]

Yes. From 2020, Cyber Monday will be known as National Car Ballet Day.

Autonomous vehicles across the country will congregate to perform synchronized donuts to music broadcast on national radio.

And also fight crime.

Silliness aside - any override system represents a potential security weakness which creates problems to outweigh benefits.

 

[Pdub2015]

Self Drive with a human driver present, prepared to intervene when necessary, and Self Drive with NO driver present are two different animals. But we want them both. Not only is the concept of having a "robot chaffeur" attractive, so is the notion being put forth by Tesla of a future where our cars drive off by themselves to park, or charge, or get service, or pick up others. Since we're speaking of regulations, which will be introduced by legislators, then it's up to us as participants in our local/national politics to drive the agenda, so to speak. But how much of our "freedom" will we be willing to concede in order to obtain the benefits of Self Drive as we imagine them today?

Kind of like this so-called smartphone that I take everywhere with me, we have relinquished varying levels of privacy for the privilege of satellite navigation, instant communications, convenient payment methods and ever present entertainment. I'm thinking most of us will quickly agree to whatever terms of service arrive with Level 5 activation... including the ability of the State to take over our vehicles as they see fit.

 

[malcolm]

Increasingly the problem with State intervention, is which State?

All nations are actively trying to press each others' digital buttons remotely.

The use of Stuxnet; the DNC emails; the DDS on Dyne etc etc

Governments need to think twice before they give themselves access to a whole new set of buttons.

 

[JeffK]

That'd be kind of funny if you tried to use a self driving Tesla as a getaway car...
It pulls out of the bank parking lot after stopping, signalling, goes the speed limit, and is courteous to other drivers. The cops arrive and it gently pulls over the side of the road without a fight. haha

 

[Bangor Bob]

Maybe not at first, but eventually I suspect it's a near certainty, yes.

There's also potential for wacky stuff like lenders wanting a remote-disable or remote-reposession mode, public safety and law enforcement wanting vehicle geofences for a host of reasons - to prevent entry to areas with evacuation orders, to have traffic avoid presidential motorcades, to keep registered sex offenders and people with restraining orders from areas where they shouldn't be, to reroute people with warrants to the local police station...

Depends how big brother we as a society let them get, I suppose...

 

[JeffK]

Maybe not at first, but eventually I suspect it's a near certainty, yes.

There's also potential for wacky stuff like lenders wanting a remote-disable or remote-reposession mode, public safety and law enforcement wanting vehicle geofences for a host of reasons - to prevent entry to areas with evacuation orders, to have traffic avoid presidential motorcades, to keep registered sex offenders and people with restraining orders from areas where they shouldn't be, to reroute people with warrants to the local police station...

Depends how big brother we as a society let them get, I suppose...

meh nothing a wifi/gps/cell phone jammer can't fix