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Comment by em500 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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

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.

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