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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.
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.
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?