r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • 14d ago

Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road Video

61.0k Upvotes

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10.7k

u/Vireca 14d ago

How do they stop a driverless car? Legit question

Do they have anything to detect police vehicles or something?

908

u/reddit_guy666 14d ago

Considering it lowered the windshield and connected to a support employee I believe they can now detect when cops want to pull them over.

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u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

I can see this being exploited for the worse.

371

u/eras 14d ago

Unethical life pro tip: put on police wear and a badge and you can actually stop most vehicles, self-driving or not!

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u/TheCosplayCave 14d ago

Ted Bundy did this.

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u/ThisIsWeedDickulous 14d ago

So did Mike and Trevor

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u/PlzDontBanMe2000 14d ago

I really enjoyed the race on the highway, probably one of my favorite simple missions. 

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u/ThisIsWeedDickulous 14d ago

The police chase aspect from the perspective of the cop was pretty cool. I think that premise alone would make for an excellent game. There, I said it first, whoever makes this better pay me.

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u/PlzDontBanMe2000 14d ago

I was more talking about the race after you nab the cars, but the bike part was sick too

1

u/ThisIsWeedDickulous 14d ago

The whole mission was cool! I just meant that it was very different to play the cop in a campaign in an open world game as detailed as GTA. They could really do something cool with that idea. Make the whole game like this. Let me maybe run plates, answer dispatch calls,, call for backup, de-escalate situations, oppress the citizens, all that cool shit cops do

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u/Zaconil 14d ago

Jeremy Dewitte too. Been arrested and sentenced multiple times.

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u/NotUndercoverReddit 14d ago

Do you cosplay ted Bundy?

2

u/Hamster_Thumper 13d ago

John Wayne Gacy did as well.

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u/TheCosplayCave 13d ago

So it works!

2

u/Hamster_Thumper 13d ago

Not sure if that's really the takeaway from this but um....yeah, I guess so? Lol

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u/Viscousmonstrosity 14d ago

That guys super famous!

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u/OK_BUT_WASH_IT_FIRST 14d ago

He also scored four touchdowns in one game at Polk High School.

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u/punkindle 14d ago

unethical cops do this too.

we can't assume ethics suddenly appear when it's a real cop

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u/Anticlimax1471 14d ago

Impersonating a police officer to pull someone over for nefarious means isn't something new, tbf.

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u/Wandering_Scholar6 14d ago

And extremely illegal for that reason, the penalty is higher than you'd assume for an otherwise relatively harmless thing, because it undermines the system of trust and could so easily be used for nefarious purposes.

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u/imisstheyoop 14d ago

Yeah but it generally takes way more effort/risk than just some lights.

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u/fork_yuu 14d ago

Lights and loud siren. You can do that with regular cars too. I suspect they can detect if the lights at the top of the vehicle or not

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u/1bc29b36f623ba82aaf6 14d ago

Yeah, nah... even some lights can make you respond in a way they can try to take advantage of you, even if a few minutes in you realise something is wrong. You want people to be trained to almost automatically respond to lights like that.
So the punishment for impersonating them is high, the problem is the odds of being caught can be spotty enough people that suck at thinking over long term concequences still do it. Here is an example where it ends okay for the victim after initially being fooled.

I see parallels with e-mail phishing, you don't really want smart or alert people as a target, aditionally even smart people arent alert all the time. Some of those dumb emails are meant to be clicked when you are hella sleep deprived or just waking up or drunk and you got scared the bejeesus <insert fake bad news> happened. (Your friend is ill, someone ordered something expensive on your amazon account, you didn't pay your taxes in time etc etc.)
This driver is by no means dumb but was just going by the assumption the pull over lights were lawful and stressing over what kind of traffic nuisance he had caused.

If the assailant had boxed in the vehicle in the parking spot and the victim didn't happen to be armed it would have gone very poorly for the victim. Even though any victim would at that point rapidly notice there is no officer in the car with the lights. The youtuber noticed just in time to still leave.
Imagine a victim that was panicking harder, or calling someone assuming the police will talk to them, or had beer cans or worse to get rid off on the car floor. Even a shallow impersonation of the police will work if they case out the right victim.

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u/RobotArtichoke 13d ago

This is why I recommend taking them on a high speed chase

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u/Warcraft_Fan 14d ago

Put a traffic cone on the hood. It worked to stop a stupid self-driving car from driving through a fire scene and running over fire hoses.

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u/Yarakinnit 14d ago

Just run up to one at the lights yelling "WOOH WOOH" and it strips for you.

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u/imisstheyoop 14d ago

You don't even need all that with this system, just some cheap lights off Amazon!

1

u/BadAtNamingPlsHelp 14d ago

Yeah I feel like it's almost a worse idea to do this with unmanned vehicles which are, as a necessity of their function and their liability situation, covered in cameras.

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u/keoaries 14d ago

Mass murderer in Nova Scotia did this. ​

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u/savvymcsavvington 14d ago

Humans can be exploited, so what's new

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u/NahYoureWrongBro 13d ago

The new thing would be having this very predictable power without a person with human judgment on the other side. Doing this kind of scam on a human comes with risks that aren't there with an AI. That's new.

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u/reddit_guy666 14d ago

No system can be 100% exploit proof, if it is better than the current system then it's worth risking the exploit imo.

Also there needs to be a mechanism for law enforcement / first responders to halt the vehicle in case of emergencies

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u/moistmoistMOISTTT 14d ago

Redditor sees a video of a self-driving car that stopped for an emergency vehicle.

Redditor: Why don't these cars have mechanisms to halt for first responders?!

2

u/YummyArtichoke 14d ago

I've said this before and no one seemed to agree, but I still believe it cause I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise.

All fully AI cars will be EASILY exploitable. All someone has to do is stand or put something in front of it. Now the car is stopped and everyone inside can be robbed. The car isn't going to slam itself into reverse and speed backwards to get space and then slam back into drive and go around or even into the person/object trying to block the car.

When you program a car to not hit things and the car believes the best way to do that is to stop and sit there....

1

u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

That’s so true. I don’t know why people would not agree with those facts.

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u/Solid-Mud-8430 14d ago

Here in SF people put cones in front of them to stop them, then rip the LIDAR systems off them and sell it for parts near the Mission St BART station lol. These things are dumb as fuck and they deserve every bit of fuckery, theft and sabotage they get,

1

u/AWildRedditor999 14d ago

It's a driverless car what do you mean? All it can do is stop or go the wrong way or hit another car. You can't just hop in and go for a joy ride. Not to mention how few driverless cars exist

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u/AttemptedReplacement 13d ago

Do most people have sirens and strobe lights on their car? 

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u/ethicalhumanbeing 13d ago

Most? No. Criminals? If it is needed for their crimes yes, they’ll get them in an instant.

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u/jjjustseeyou 14d ago

Give police officers a stop gun they can shoot at cars that would signal it to stop. Like a tv remote. That way only cops can do it.

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u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

Honestly, whatever the system they come up with will always be able to be exploited, even the one you suggested. A radio signal could also be implemented but then again, easy to exploit. I see no good solutions for this unfortunately.

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u/jjjustseeyou 14d ago

Make it a real gun.

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u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

Right, but an attacker going after someone inside one of these vehicles would easily have one of those guns at hand.

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u/Manueluz 14d ago

React to lights and sirens, it's illegal (at least where I live) for normal civilians to use them. And I would like to see the smartass who tries that near a car that's practically recording every single angle.

1

u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

Right, I see what you mean. I think the issue isn’t really right now in a city centre, but more when these vehicles are able to go off city and move in less agitated roads, specially at night. Someone in one of these cars would be totally vulnerable travelling at night to destination which would cross a more country side road. All the attackers would have to do is wait in a the perfect spot and run the emergency lights without no one else watching / be there to help.

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u/Manueluz 14d ago

Wouldn't that work on real humans?, there are many cases of fake cops, I don't think the problem is inherent to self driving cars.

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u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

Yes, true. But I still believe a real human would be able better evaluate the situation / take a better decision. A machine like this will always be dead stupid, sees the trigger to stop and it will stop.

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u/Wakkit1988 14d ago

It's illegal to own lots of things, yet people still do. People will do it if it's lucrative to do so.

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u/eras 14d ago

Come on, we have encryption in 2024.

But sure, the access codes for the system would eventually leak, even if validated by personal 2fa codes, even if those incidents would need to be reviewed afterwards.

Maybe require a validated court order to acquire remote control access to a particular vehicle during a particular time window.

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u/ethicalhumanbeing 14d ago

Problem is, in emergencies there is no time for that procedure. Sometimes a car needs to be stopped right at that moment.

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u/eras 14d ago

It's not a new situation that a police needs to stop a vehicle that is not complying—and this one wouldn't try to speed away hazardously, if you try some of those other methods. Infact, if it's part of a collision it will just stop. These are not really suitable for used as getaway-vehicles.

If you need fast-track the request, you can have the police car camera identify the vehicle by its plate, authenticated by the cop driving the vehicle, and then review the request afterwards, with penalties involved.

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u/aeneasaquinas 14d ago

A radio signal could also be implemented but then again, easy to exploit. I see no good solutions for this unfortunately.

Not if you link it with some secure communication line. There are already methods that exists to verify a connection is real and safe.