The old days of routine traffic stops are about to get trickier for police. With autonomous vehicles, there will be a wide range of decisions for officers to make in real time, such as whether the car was being fully operated by no human? The good news is that companies like Waymo are already including law enforcement in their planning, so it may be one area of AV policy that gets solved sooner rather than later.
Experts are already speculating that the age of AVs will change policing, and what the social implications of those changes may be. For one thing, a report by the Marshall Project predicts that it would be the end of traffic stops, which would also mean the end of so-called pretext stops, in which “officers stop a motorist for a minor violation in order to investigate a potentially more serious crime.”
Other big questions remain unanswered. One area of particular concern is whether or not regulations would mandate a “kill switch” to enable law enforcement agencies to shut down the vehicles if needed.
In the meantime, the more common tasks like filing crash reports and issuing DUIs will be tweaked in some ways. And first responders should be a part of the conversation as much as the companies and local policy makers.
Getting AVs out on the road has never been just about the technology; policymakers, researchers, and safety advocates have been going back and forth about how they should be regulated, and what traffic laws should look like in the future.
And at least in early conversations, it seemed like law enforcement agencies were largely left out of the discussion. Last September, policy guidance from the Department of Transportation urged local officials to involve police and other first responders when considering whether to let companies test AVs in their state, and to train them on potential hazards.
Waymo, which according to a 43-page safety report published this month, is creating a “library of sights and sounds” to feed into its software.
In the same report that highlighted Waymo’s partnership with Chandler, Ariz., the company also offers a glimpse at its collaboration efforts with fire and police departments in cities where they test their cars. Those cities, according to the report, can get on-site training for their officers and first responders on how to identify and assess self-driving cars after a collision.