All the police probably have to do to stop an autonomous vehicle is to turn on their lights. Autonomous vehicles have to follow all traffic laws, which would include stopping for emergency vehicles.
That's actually a grey area. Following incidences of police impersonation, it was recommended that concerned people should turn on their blinker to acknowledge the police and safely drive to the nearest populated area before pulling over.
Having your car automatically and uncontrollably pull over every time red & blue lights are observed could lead to traps being set up on any backwoods road.
Edit: I really wish the news article would link to the actual source report so I could confirm it, but I bet that the above scenario is included in the FBI's hypotheticals.
If it's really a concern, (real) emergency vehicles could stick in a wireless beacon with an API the driverless cars could query, that would respond with a {currently_an_emergency: true} signed by a government-CA-issued TLS cert. Then you'd only have to worry about officially sanctioned creepy cops pulling you over on deserted roads.
Is it required that you stop for emergency vehicles? I have always been under the impression that moving out of the way was sufficient. Cops would have no reason to pull over autonomous vehicles unless they were stolen or unsafely damaged.
The vehicles could limit themselves to only drive X miles on a public highway after the registration expires before it alerts the DMV and you receive a ticket.
I just realized something, when the majority of vehicles become autonomous, we will need less police patrolling the streets. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
