Laser attack blinds autonomous vehicles, deleting pedestrians and confusing cars

Yep, buy 15 kilos of nails and go to your local highway bridge, you'll have much easier time

I'm not sure the intent of such studies is maliciously trying to stop autonomous driving. It's important to study the consequences / potential risks of any new thing. I'd almost say that's human nature. A better understanding of what can go wrong can lead to improvements down the line.

If anything, it could be supporting evidence against cars without manual controls for human intervention. Like the rumored-for-300-years Apple Car that claimed it would have no controls of any kind, or some kind of shuttle service.

Of course manual intervention still might not be all that effective if you're barreling toward a pedestrian and not paying any attention...

I had a different take from reading the article.

For one, a human driver would know they’ve been blinded by a laser (or something) and probably hit the breaks. Thus, you could say the human driver is acutely aware that something exceptional occurred.

In this case it wasn’t complete blindness but more like creating a blind spot in a certain spot in the field. However, and more importantly, the car doesn’t realize this blind spot is there or that anything exceptional has occurred and just keeps going.