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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Well, the "hands on wheel, driver paying attention" detection system clearly wasn't effective.

Fortunately he was headed north on US 101, not south. Seven miles ending in Palo Alto means he went through the 101-85 interchange where a Tesla hit the divider barrier and killed the driver. But that shallow-angle split is southbound only. Northbound, you can go seven miles to Palo Alto without any unusual offramps that would confuse Tesla's lane-follower.

Tesla's lane follower is pretty good. That's what creates the illusion that it can self-drive. Car-ahead detection, reasonably good. Obstacle detection, not so good. So the CHP did the right thing, boxing it in with their patrol cars and slowing down. It would have been much worse if they'd set up a roadblock.

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I wonder how much longer is it going to be until we get a regulatory required pull over signal for autonomous systems and how in the hell you would secure it considering it would need to be used by countless law enforcement agencies world wide and would need to be implemented by multiple manufacturers.

I’m pretty sure it would be some emergency stop button in the cabbin at first but then someone somewhere would want to pass a law that would enable the police to remotely initiate it.

It'll allow criminals to intercept and kill drivers in empty roads, not very good solution. At least driver should be able to disable this system.

A "law enforcement has requested that your car pull over automatically, press here if you don't want this to happen" dialog would serve the need here while also protecting passengers from bad actors.

How do you differentiate between “real” law enforcement and fake ?

Well, you could look to see if the cops are behind you. If it's a malicious actor posing in cop cars already, I think there's bigger issues, since most will stop if they see they're being followed by a cop with their lights on.

In my country you could choose not to stop and instead drive to the nearest police station, if you have doubts whether cops are legitimate. They are supposed to escort you or something like that.

Isn’t this an issue with or without a self-driving car?

In the US you can call 112 to verify it. Also you can turn on you hazzard lights slow down and drive to a safe place, most cops are thankful when you avoid stopping on a dangerous part of the highway like narrow shoulders or ramps.

You just always push it, and get pulled over the old fashioned way.

Hence the “how will we secure them” at some point there will be no driver, even if the car still has a steering wheele and controls you might be in the back seat napping while the car drives you.

Audi already has a backseat traffic driver mode where you can get a foot rub while the car drives in traffic.

This will eventually require a solution.

Where's the profit in that? Generally criminals are motivated by profit, and wanton destruction.

Steal car and everything inside.

>> we get a regulatory required pull over signal for autonomous systems and how in the hell you would secure it considering it would need to be used by countless law enforcement agencies world wide

Regulatory requirement is per jurisdiction, isn’t it.

Yes and no, people tend to drive their cars outside of a given jurisdiction as in a Tesla owner in California might drive to Nevada or even Canada or Mexico.

Also I don’t think manufacturers would want to develop 500 system so when the first demand comes they’ll likely implement it across the board.

I would also not be surprised if they find a way (or at least try too) to charge LEO’s for this “services” similarly to how cellphone companies charge for wiretaps, call logs and telemetry data.

Data point: that part of 101 is getting the new lane divider treatment. Also, the aforementioned HOV exit to 85 now has lines across the gore point.

No more Botts dots.

> Fortunately he was headed north on US 101, not south.

The article states: "The vehicle was traveling southbound on Highway 101 in Palo Alto."

Thanks. So there he was, headed for the same place the last Tesla fatal crash occurred.

The interchanges for seven miles north of Palo Alto are all rather vanilla, too. 85 is the only big, complicated interchange near there.

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