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A San Francisco power outage left Waymo's self-driving cars stranded at intersections
(www.engadget.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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This is one of the many edge cases that I’ve been convinced will keep self driving cars from becoming mainstream unless/until true AGI is achieved.
A few years ago I stopped at a red light next to a construction site. I was watching the traffic light, so at first I didn't notice a cop at the construction site trying to wave me through the red light. He finally took a few steps towards me and yelled to get my attention. Only then did I realize he was waving me through, so I did just that. I seriously doubt any current self driving car would recognize a police officer (and not just a random pedestrian) that’s overriding the traffic signal like that.
Another edge case, coincidentally at the same intersection a few years earlier was when there was a car fully engulfed in flames as I drove up. I could hear sirens in the distance, and the cars in every direction were making sure to safely get out of the way of the approaching fire trucks. At least one or two cars cautiously crossed on the red to get out of the way. Again, I doubt any current self driving car would have navigated that situation anywhere nearly as well as a human.
I almost tested that first example but was too slow. I had a one month free trial of self-driving and approached a similar construction site where I didn’t see the officer at first ….. thinking “I wonder what the car would do?”
Easy. Give police the ability to remotely control driverless cars.
I mean, that is going to be a thing they will implement anyway, and probably not restricted to driverless cars.
Yes, let's give the group that has extensive abuse and corruption issues with nigh zero accountability new ways to hurt people.
If anything, we should be advocating against remote vehicle control for the myriad security and safety issues that would introduce.
If you give police a backdoor to control self-driving cars, somebody is going (to hack it and) use it to kill somebody.
Exactly. Any such remote control would have to be trivial for a cop to use, and also need to directly control only the car(s) the cop is currently interacting with. Think of a situation like this where a traffic light is disabled and a cop is there directing traffic. If driverless cars are approaching from multiple directions then how does the cop direct his commands to only the one he’s focusing on at the given moment? Not all that easy when you think about it…
Like a flashlight, or laser pointer ….. or gun. “Just point this gun-like object at the car you want to stop…”. What could go wrong?
Yes! Yes it is! Not even close to as big of a problem as giving police full remote control of our vehicles, but, that too!
You can already kill someone with a car without any hacking.
It happens every day.
OP argued that giving police such powers is a bad idea because there will be NEW vectors for people to harm others — not that other, easier ways don't exist already.
Then you come in and say, there are ways to kill people using cars already. Literally, the only thing we can say to that is, "yes, we know and what is your point?"
The commenter before me described the solution, give cops an override, as easy. I wanted to highlight that it isn't that easy. Unintended side effects ought to be considered before coming up with seemingly easy solutions. And this problem is not dissimilar to the one about encrypted chats and law enforcement wanting a backdoor into that. If you build a backdoor, it's not guaranteed that only the good guys use it. And that raises questions about privacy on the encryption front or questions about abuse, safety, and liability on the self-driving car front.
I'm not arguing any of that. Giving police access to a car override would open up horrible abuse of power but that wasn't your argument. Your argument was that people would hack it to kill people.
I'm saying that it's much easier to kill someone by just driving over them with your car and claiming it's an accident. It happens every day and people walk away without any repercussions. No hacking necessary.
Do I really trust humans to perform much better when traffic lights are out?
I can recognize when a police officer is directing traffic at a dead traffic light. I can also recognize the intent of other drivers who may wave, flash their headlights, etc. I doubt any current self driving cars can accurately recognize any of those.
If the power had just gone out and the mind was in thought – I could foresee you, me, or some Karen blowing through the intersection.