Is your car a bounty hunter?

When the term “bounty hunter” is used, most people immediately think of the popular reality television personality, who spends his time pursuing a diverse slate of fugitives across the United States. With the swift development and increasing popularity of autonomous vehicles (AV), at some point in the not-so-distant future, cars might be charged with the duty of bringing lawbreakers to the police, acting as a type of bounty hunter.

So, what if you’re leaving work one evening only to find an empty parking spot where your Tesla was parked mere hours before. You call the police and they ask you for permission to take over your car, which you give immediately. The car then receives the command to drive to the nearest police station. If the thief happens to still be in the vehicle when the police take it over, he will be locked inside the car until the police can arrest him.

Although this seems advanced and futuristic, law enforcement is reporting that they are taking steps to test the possibility of stopping crimes by taking over autonomous vehicles. Police are working with the car makers because information about AV hacking is invaluable to entities up and down the line of AV manufacturing. GM has begun preparation for issues like this beginning in 2009 by equipping some of its vehicles with an emergency switch that can turn off the engine if the vehicle is stolen.

Gaining remote control

Last November in California, a Tesla was going 70 mph with a turn signal blinking, cruising for miles, and passing exit after exit. A police officer noticed the car and pulled up alongside it, to see the driver with his head slumped over the steering wheel. The officer lit up his lights and turned on his sirens, but the display failed to rouse the driver. The officer guessed, correctly, that the car was driving itself under what Tesla calls Autopilot.

Currently, police officers do not have the technology or authority to pull over an autonomous vehicle that is driving via autopilot. Since the driver, in this case, was unresponsive, the officers had to use innovative techniques to get the car safely to the side of the road. One officer blocked traffic while another pulled in front of the offending vehicle and continually slowed down until the two vehicles were stopped.

This appears to be the first case where law enforcement has stopped a vehicle on an open road under the control of an automated system, but it surely won’t be the last. AVs can’t drive unchecked on the roads until car makers, lawmakers and police work through several difficult problems.

So what if this same situation with the Tesla and the drunk driver were to happen, but the vehicle could pull itself over in response to the police lights and sirens? Since AVs won’t be speeding, driving recklessly, double parking, or running red lights and stop signs, it does seem unlikely that the vehicle will be pulled over, but cars on the road must still yield to emergency vehicles.

Google and other AV manufacturers have patented programs like “emergency vehicle detection,” technology that can detect lights and sirens and yield appropriately. A bigger issue is how an AV can detect an officer located outside of his cruiser. Human drivers can respond to visual cues, nods, waves and eye contact. An autonomous vehicle will not be able to respond to these clues in the same way. A seemingly easy solution is to give officers a tool that can redirect AVs to a different route where they will not encounter officers on the road. However, giving officers that kind of unchecked authority is a completely unmapped risk.

What if the police had the legal authority to make the car safely pull to the side of the road instead of having the vehicle pull itself over of its own accord? Police have been asking for access to “takeover” AVs so that when a vehicle malfunctions the car can be safely pulled over and redirected or driven to a police station. Giving police access to AVs could help with crime control, but allowing unobstructed access to all of the autonomous vehicles on the road might not be the best way to address the issue.

If the police can access the network of autonomous vehicles and redirect them, or tell them to go somewhere or do something, in particular, hackers will be able to hack into the system and access all of the connected AVs to do their bidding as well. Waymo has partially addressed this issue by building in help buttons and 24-hour hotlines for drivers to call in the case of a roadside emergency or vehicle malfunction. Waymo’s staff cannot remotely take control of the car, but they can reroute the vehicle if that function becomes necessary after an accident.

Automated vehicle realities

The encroaching reality of AVs is going to cause seismic shifts in traffic policing strategies, policies and enforcement. So much of policing sometimes exceeds the bounds of a traffic law infraction but is based on traffic law enforcement. An officer can be pulling over a vehicle for a traffic stop and by observation can detect other lawbreaking activities such as narcotics and human trafficking.

Almost every human driver routinely violates traffic laws. Without the ability to pull over somebody under the pretext of speeding or running a red light, many of these crimes will go undetected. The police could spend days following an AV suspected of being involved in a crime without ever having a reason to pull that vehicle over and stop the illegal activity.

Alternatively, what would happen if the AV could somehow determine that the driver was breaking the law by sensing the presence of alcohol in the air or checking recent warrants against owner names and driver’s faces, and instead of driving her home, drove her to the nearest police station?

Hacking an autonomous vehicle can potentially take several forms, and we won’t know the extent of the hacking ability until we are further immersed in the AV world. Hackers have already shown that they can cause a vehicle’s engine to stop working. The hacker can use code to tell the vehicle there is something in the path, causing the car to swerve or stop for no reason. Hackers can stop vehicles on the highway, causing unexpected gridlock and they can slow down a car causing slower traffic patterns.

Suicide bombers will no longer have to commit suicide to initiate an attack. Instead, they can send a driverless car packed with explosives down a busy city street. While a system that detects empty cars would be useful for situations like this, one of the main attractions to autonomous cars is the on-demand economy. The vehicle would need to be able to pick up a passenger whenever and wherever summoned.

This is all very far in the future. Currently, most citizens cannot legally drive autonomous cars on public roads. Police, lawmakers and car manufacturers are all eager to have this technology tested and approved for public use. Traffic infractions, accidents and fatalities will decrease significantly with the implementation and regular use of autonomous vehicles, and public safety is the most important aspect for all parties involved.

Hannah E. Smith, JD, (hsmith@alm.com) is an insurance law editor with FC&S Online, the authority on insurance coverage interpretation and analysis for the P&C industry.

Related: How the auto insurance industry will adapt to driverless vehicles