

So can Google's self-driving cars be jacked? - mud_dauber

Just saw the news that SDCs are coming to Austin. One of my friends posed the question, and it&#x27;s a good one. What does the community say?
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kleer001
Can we assume the team is intelligent and has general experience with
security? Can we assume that the autonomous driving Google team is aware of
car-jacking? Can we assume they are able to find a better solution than human
driven vehicles?

I say it's up to your friend to construct an argument against the SDC
engineering teams being aware of the problem or unable to solve it better than
the solution we already have. I have a hard time constructing either.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

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vixsomnis
If there's no manual override, then it would be trivial to stop the car and
threaten the passenger. According to the LA Times [0], Google is trying to
make their autos fully autonomous, without any user controls. I'm not sure if
there's more recent news than this.

If there is a manual override (wheel and pedals), the door is already locked
when in motion, so the driver should have enough time to floor the gas and
escape.

Unless Google incorporates some seriously advanced detection and response, I
see SDCs being an easy target for criminals.

[0] [http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-google-
car-20140...](http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-google-
car-20140529-story.html)

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partisan
If someone stands in front of one of these cars then I imagine it will stay
still. Someone could probably commandeer it at that point. A person in the
same situation might sense they are in danger and try to get away. I would be
ok with having the self driving car give itself over since that is safer for
the public, but what if there is a human passenger in the self driving car?

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kleer001
> Someone could probably commandeer it at that point.

How exactly would that happen and what fail-safes could google put into place
to prevent those?

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partisan
One person stands in front of the car to stop it. The next person smashes a
window and jumps in. What comes next is a guess, but they would probably do
something to override the controls. I imagine that there must be an override
button on the car somewhere, otherwise you have literally no control over the
car in the event of an emergency.

I don't know that they can prevent it through fail-safes. I think they can
discourage it, at best, but as with any system, people will find a way to
force the system to suit their needs.

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kleer001
That sounds like a pretty easy fix. I bet there's several ways to prevent
that. No Ai necessary. Acceleration profiles, non accident window breaking,
area criminality profiling, speed profiling... As soon as you get expert
systems into it it gets even easier. No problem.

