Hacker News Reader

Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

How do you pull over an autonomous car? Like, how does it know that it needs to pull over?

"We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles and have a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this.”

And yes, that seems thoroughly impractical at scale.

Ok. So I guess the SFPD has been tailing the Cruise car, called the number, and then Cruise personnel made it pull over remotely?

If that's the case then it's pretty impractical and double standard vs a human driver who needs to pull over immediately when instructed by the police or face potentially grave consequences if he doesn't immediately comply.

When I'm at the wheel, I can't just tell the cop tailing me "yeah officer, I didn't pull over when you told me to behause you should have called me on my cell to tell me that" lol.

> double standard vs a human driver who needs to pull over immediately when instructed by the police or face potentially grave consequences

Especially where Police is so hasty to use their cruisers as weapons[1]

[1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/10/arkansa...

On an unrelated note: why are the US police cars called "cruisers"? Are they a different category so to say?

The best description is on the first result from search:

> Police cars are called cruisers because that is what they do. They cruise about town, looking for trouble, and responding to those requiring assistance.

Doubt the original poster meant any irony there, but...

Still, Webster:

> cruiser, noun:

> 1 : a vehicle that _cruises_: such as

> a : squad car

> cruise, verb:

> 1 : to sail about touching at a series of ports

> 4 a : to go about the streets at random but on the lookout for possible developments

So probably it is the origin.

Wonder if there are similar designations in other languages. In my native one the term 'cruise' is restricted only for sail (as in v., 1 definition in Webster), so it could never be applied to a police car roaming the streets.

  > In my native one the term 'cruise' is restricted only for sail

Do you not used a cognate word for "Cruise control" in your language?

In Hebrew "Shait" is used for sail, but also for the idea of cruise control and a cruise missile. I cannot think of any other uses, not even for patrol vehicles.

In Swedish at least the 'cruise' when talking about in ships and missiles is the same word, but "cruise control" is a completely different word (literally "speed holder"). You can't "cruise" in you car in Swedish.

In Italy our police cars are much faster, a police car is usually called "volante" (literally "flying"), the more correct name is "autopattuglia" which is more like "patrol car".

Then we have the two different animal derived names, police cars are "pantere" (panthers) and the Carabinieri ones are "gazzelle" (gazelles).

As well you can't cruise with a car, the cruise control (often untranslated) is a "regolatore di velocità" (speed regulator), but you can actually mantain a "velocità di crociera" (cruise speed) on a vehicle.

  > a police car is usually called "volante" (literally "flying")

Don't all cars driven by Italians do that? I think that I've even seen a Punto with a single poor tire on the pavement once. :)

No Pinto ever set foot (I mean tire) in Italy AFAICT, I think they weren't ever imported in Europe, but - seriously - I once happened to be overtaken by one of the few Lamborghini's they have, on a highway, I was going (cruising) at a "normal" speed (some 120 kmh) and had this strange "something blue" feeling in the rear mirror and by the time I realized it was the police flashing lights I heard "whoosh" and they were gone. (in some rare cases they use these Lambo's to transport transplant organs when elicopter was not available/couldn't fly) between cities:

https://it.motor1.com/news/457740/lamborghini-huracan-polizi...

Oops, I corrected "Pinto" to "Punto". For some reason, typing that just feels like it's a dirty word.

I see, that makes sense now.

> Do you not used a cognate word for "Cruise control" in your language?

It is a literal copy from English here. ESC/ESP and ABS are used or abbreviations or as a full text ones, but they map 1:1 to both English and abbreviated counterparts.

For what it worth I checked how the article "cruise missile" is called in other languages in Wikipedia (well at least ones I could tell).

Most European languages uses a some variation of "cruise", while some European and Slavic languages uses "winged" or even "maneuverable" (Polish). There is a slight correlation between a sea-faring countries and a former Warsaw Pact ones.

History.

Transporting the verb "cruise" makes more sense circa 1915 when foot and mounted patrols are proportionally more common and the steering wheel interface had just recently been ported over from watercraft.

I'm guessing the plan is that once you reach that scale there will be people in the cars?

How can a passenger force a fully autonomous taxi to pull over? And what happens when the passenger is in the driver's seat and the police think they are resisting orders?

I would be certainly terrified if the car didn't pull over and I would see cops chasing me. And all I could do was watch.

Next thing you hear is shots and glass breaking sounds. Not sure you hear much more though.

Pretty sure you'd have some sort of "gracefully pull over" and "hard emergency stop" options in those once they are actually used for passengers? There's other reasons than police stops you would want to have the option.

The scalable solution would be that law enforcement will be given a direct override/pull-over button for any driverless car. I expect this to happen in the future if driverless cars reach large volumes. Maybe I haven't thought this through enough, but I can't imagine a circumstance where you would want a driverless car to be able to ignore stopping directions from law enforcement.

> I can't imagine a circumstance where you would want a driverless car to be able to ignore stopping directions from law enforcement.

Funny, I can't imagine a circumstance where I would want "law enforcement" to be able to override my directions and take control of my car.

Do you want number plates?

Mine have never helped me get anything except for parking fines, but lawmakers decided being able to visually and uniquely identify a car for the purposes of law enforcement was more important than my privacy because it enabled widespread use of this dangerous and strictly regulated machinery.

You can own a car without number plates, you just can't drive it on a public road. Presumably similar with this hypothetical kill switch. Requiring compliance with rules for access to a shared resource doesn't seem that ethically challenging when you think about it.

Ok, I'm guessing you're American. I've read that the relationship between the police and the public can be a bit .. antagonistic. And I know that fugitives are disproportionately romanticized in fiction.

But police officers giving you stopping directions are already overriding your directions and taking control of your car, fully backed by law and and force if necessary. Only with a very inefficient implementation.

And, like guns, only the police will ever use this weapon and only for the purposes of public good.

>Ok, I'm guessing you're American. I've read that the relationship between the police and the public can be a bit .. antagonistic. And I know that fugitives are disproportionately romanticized in fiction.

Two can play at this dumb game.

I'm guessing you're European. I've read that the relationship between the police and the public can be a bit .. blindly trusting. And I know that fugitives are disproportionately demonized in fiction.

I'd say you should concern yourself with problems on your side of the ocean and I'll do likewise. But looking at history says that's wishful thinking.

Also, we're talking about driverless cars. The scenario is not the police pressing a remote stop button to override your directions, it's to override Cruise/Waymo/Uber's AI or remote control.

This is a serious question, is there some real scenario that hasn't occurred to me, where it's desirable for either Cruise/Waymo/Uber's remote control or the onboard AI to ignore stopping directives from the police?

No. I agree with you. I was thinking further down the line, when everyone is in a driverless (optional?) car.

Wouldn’t it be great to give the government the power to cause a traffic accident for anyone they didn’t like?

They already can. Police will simply crash your car if they feel like it by using their car.

That only happens when your running from them. Imagine if we give the DNC a kill switch to every car in America. Place it under as a tax penalty, and you'd have to wait until their audit finished in your favor for them to consider turning your car back on.

It's supposed to only happen when you're running from them (though I think it shouldn't happen then either), but the reality is they will do it if they feel like it. The only thing stopping them is physics. Police are generally not held accountable.

Either that or I could argue we already have a killswitch like that - suspending your license - if I also go along with the idea that the cop won't flip your car when you're not running from them because that's also illegal.

So either we have a world where the system works or where it doesn't, but unfortunately we have both.

> That only happens when your running from them.

Except for all the times it's happened when people weren't running from them?

Some of us feel that the death of Michael Hastings was a demonstration of exactly that.

It's all fun and games until someone else figures out a remote attack on that system.

Actually, I'd expect driverless cars to rarely get pulled over by police, so in fact this scales fine.

I would assume they have to have it programmed in them to pull over.

They already need to incase of ambulance or fire trucks behind them. That's a day one feature. You see emergency flashing lights you pull over until they pass you.

If they pull over behind you, then that's just a case of lights behind you, pull over and the car remains stopped.

Flashing lights to signal to pull over is one of the most unbreakable of all driving rules, you can't release a self driving car that can't handle that case.

Same way humans do? It needs to recognize flashing lights and emergency vehicles to obey the law to get out of their way, and from there add code to fully pull over and remain stopped as long as there’s a cop car with flashing lights staying behind you.

I assume it's more complex that that, but I can't see how a driverless car can reliable distinguish between being pulled over and an emergency vehicle is trying to get past on a narrow road.

It might not, but the behaviour would be the same, so the effect is achieved.

No, because on a narrow road, coming to a stop blocks the vehicle behind you.

If your on a narrow road where you can't safely pull over, you don't stop. You continue until you could safely pull over enough.

Stopping would cause more harm than good if they're actually trying to get around you.

Sure, I know that, but does a driverless car? All it can see is blue lights right behind it, which could mean "stop right now or we'll shoot you" or "get a move on to the next passing point you can find" depending on context (probably conveyed by the gesticulating of the driver and maybe a loudspeaker).

Part of being pulled over is not blocking traffic while stopped, so if there’s literally no shoulder/dirt to pull over onto then obviously you continue until there is.

Just like a human driver is legally required to.

Remote override for authorities to stop the car, instruct it to pull over etc. Alternatively, passengers always having access to a pull over when safe button.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com