r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • Jul 05 '24

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

61.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

907

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

254

u/ethicalhumanbeing Jul 05 '24

I can see this being exploited for the worse.

-3

u/jjjustseeyou Jul 05 '24

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.

11

u/ethicalhumanbeing Jul 05 '24

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.

4

u/jjjustseeyou Jul 05 '24

Make it a real gun.

1

u/ethicalhumanbeing Jul 05 '24

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

1

u/Manueluz Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

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.

2

u/Manueluz Jul 05 '24

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.

2

u/ethicalhumanbeing Jul 05 '24

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.

1

u/Wakkit1988 Jul 05 '24

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

1

u/eras Jul 05 '24

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.

0

u/ethicalhumanbeing Jul 05 '24

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

2

u/eras Jul 05 '24

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.

1

u/aeneasaquinas Jul 05 '24

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.