That was my first thought: would the cops simply have shot the vehicle otherwise?
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Only the ones where he portrayed sprig of rosemary or a jar of mint jelly.
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Welcome to the future, folks. We asked for it and we done got it.
Cruise put out an educational video for Police and first responders:
Of course there are issues with the idea that cops should be required to get special training to interact with a specific model of vehicle on public roads.
At 5:00 into the video the question is asked “once the Cruise AV is stopped, how does the first responder know it won’t drive away?” The answer is that the cops need to call someone from Cruise on the phone to ask. That’s a totally dogshit interface. At the very least there should also be some kind of obvious status indicator light on the vehicle.
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Which begs the question: WHO is legally responsible when a self-driving car breaks the law? Or kills somebody? It seems that the most responsible party is the company responsible for the software. And a few court findings like that will kill the idea of self driving cars in their cradle.
External kill switch? Me in a different parallel universe would jack that car up and strip it down to the frame as fast as a weasel to a chicken.
Police power to “pull cars over” is such a deeply ingrained part of American culture, neither the citizenry nor the police themselves can even imagine any other way to enforce traffic laws.
Meanwhile, traffic cameras are ubiquitous in many other countries. And achieve far better public-safety results.
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So you believe that getting a ticket in the mail for driving with your lights off is a better, safer option than a verbal warning to turn them on, which was the outcome in this case?
Granted, if it was a human driver that could be accomplished by the cop giving the warning over a loudspeaker without actually doing a full traffic stop.
Yes! Absolutely! US tanks have this sort of thing - a “fire lever” that can be pulled to deploy Halon into the tank from outside if it catches on fire. I’ve heard from occupants of the tanks that kids LOVE to run alongside and pull the lever because it causes a loud POOF when it’s pulled, and the halon dust disables the tank requiring the occupants to stay and play soccer with them for hours while they wait for the evac and days long cleanup. Fun times when you put switches on the outside of vehicles like that! 
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[…]
Did you say “bug free software”?
Also, stowaways will be a thing.
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If you think the most important function of traffic cops is to hand out fines then I guess it doesn’t matter whether the perpetrator gets pulled over or not.
If, on the other hand, you think the most important function of traffic cops is to stop dangerous drivers before they cause harm to others then it makes a lot more sense to empower police with the authority to pull over drivers who drive at unsafe speeds or drunkenly swerve between lanes or fail to yield or drive at night without their headlights on.
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Yes, consistent automated enforcement of traffic-safety laws is a better public-safety outcome than relying on Officer Friendly happening to a) be there, b) noticing, c) caring, and d) being predisposed not to gratuitously escalate.
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There are a ton of examples of devices in public places where malicious folks can cause a nuisance by flipping switches or pushing buttons. Gas pump shut offs. Innumerable fire alarm systems. “Panic buttons” that summon police to parking lots. Automatic External Defibrillators in public locations. Highway call boxes. For the most part people behave themselves and the problems from those who don’t are very manageable. But fine, if you believe that self-driving cars are fundamentally different, how about something like the keyed switches that every elevator in America has for emergency operation by firefighters? I don’t know if that’s the best possible solution but we need something.
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You seem to be implying that there are societies where all enforcement of traffic laws is left to machines and police are not authorized to pull over dangerous drivers for moving violations. I don’t believe any such place exists.
According to statista Belgium leads the world in traffic camera density with 67.6 cameras per 1,000 square kilometers. Italy has the highest total number of cameras of any European country with over 10,000. Yet police in both countries still pull over unsafe drivers for moving violations all the time. As in the United States, those automated systems supplement rather than replace the role of the police.
Fully automating all enforcement of traffic laws would be a recipe for disaster.
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So, we’re going to have fully automated cars, but traffic-safety enforcement should continue to rely near-exclusively on patrol cops “pulling over” cars (whatever that happens to mean, let alone achieve, in a driverless-car scenario)?
I blame the ubiquity of cop shows/movies for our collective inability to even imagine a better traffic-safety enforcement model.
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We don’t need to stick to the kind of policing we have now. I’d even say we needn’t have traffic enforcement officers be armed by default. But a system where no human is empowered to stop a dangerous or out-of-control vehicle? Pure madness.
How about a drone that flies out to the dangerous driver, gives them a warning, then goes through an escalation protocol to change driver behavior or force the vehicle to pull over?
Still human-controlled but keeping police off the streets and eliminating their #1 risk (traffic accidents).
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YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY.YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO COMPLY.FOUR. THREE. TWO…
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Ah, too slow on the draw…
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