[geor9e]

It doesn't sound difficult to solve. The sensors can classify firetruck, ambulance, red&blues, uniformed police, badge, siren, etc. At a certain criteria, they can unlock the driver door for normal human driving, perhaps for a very limited speed and distance. The officer can move it to the side, and if they crash it's not waymo crashing it. This override should send the an alert to the remote command center, so a human can watch the video and also decide how much further they can drive it. Since passenger safety is a concern, if there is a passenger inside who chooses to remain inside, the car should remain locked and not allow any driver in. The human can decide to follow police orders to exit the car, or remain inside, but at that point a human becomes responsible for obstructing. The whole freezing waymo trend seems driven by legal liability - not engineering. They know if they always freeze, their million miles with no accidents stats are safe.

[simulator5g]

Cops can't move vehicles that they don't own because of liability. The only way for them to move a vehicle without liability is to use a tow truck.

[dragonwriter]

> Cops can't move vehicles that they don't own because of liability. The only way for them to move a vehicle without liability is to use a tow truck.

While the precise boundaries of liability depend on the laws of the particular jurisdiction (they aren't consistent across the whole US) police generally can take reasonable action to move vehicles obstructing the road in an emergency without liability for any damages incurred, whether or not they use a tow truck to do it.

[daheza]

I mean liability can be defined, we are writing new laws for these things. Cops that need to move autonomous are not liable for any damages.

I do think that theres needs to be better handling of emergency vehicles and autonomous vehicles. Someone needs to spend some serious time thinking through how to handle this better because this situation was not okay.