And yes, that seems thoroughly impractical at scale.
When I'm at the wheel, I can't just tell the cop tailing me "yeah officer, I didn't pull over when you told me to behause you should have called me on my cell to tell me that" lol.
Especially where Police is so hasty to use their cruisers as weapons[1]
[1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/10/arkansa...
> Police cars are called cruisers because that is what they do. They cruise about town, looking for trouble, and responding to those requiring assistance.
Doubt the original poster meant any irony there, but...
Still, Webster:
> cruiser, noun:
> 1 : a vehicle that _cruises_: such as
> a : squad car
> cruise, verb:
> 1 : to sail about touching at a series of ports
> 4 a : to go about the streets at random but on the lookout for possible developments
So probably it is the origin.
Wonder if there are similar designations in other languages. In my native one the term 'cruise' is restricted only for sail (as in v., 1 definition in Webster), so it could never be applied to a police car roaming the streets.
> In my native one the term 'cruise' is restricted only for sail
In Hebrew "Shait" is used for sail, but also for the idea of cruise control and a cruise missile. I cannot think of any other uses, not even for patrol vehicles.
Then we have the two different animal derived names, police cars are "pantere" (panthers) and the Carabinieri ones are "gazzelle" (gazelles).
As well you can't cruise with a car, the cruise control (often untranslated) is a "regolatore di velocità" (speed regulator), but you can actually mantain a "velocità di crociera" (cruise speed) on a vehicle.
> a police car is usually called "volante" (literally "flying")
https://it.motor1.com/news/457740/lamborghini-huracan-polizi...
It is a literal copy from English here. ESC/ESP and ABS are used or abbreviations or as a full text ones, but they map 1:1 to both English and abbreviated counterparts.
For what it worth I checked how the article "cruise missile" is called in other languages in Wikipedia (well at least ones I could tell).
Most European languages uses a some variation of "cruise", while some European and Slavic languages uses "winged" or even "maneuverable" (Polish). There is a slight correlation between a sea-faring countries and a former Warsaw Pact ones.
Transporting the verb "cruise" makes more sense circa 1915 when foot and mounted patrols are proportionally more common and the steering wheel interface had just recently been ported over from watercraft.
Funny, I can't imagine a circumstance where I would want "law enforcement" to be able to override my directions and take control of my car.
Mine have never helped me get anything except for parking fines, but lawmakers decided being able to visually and uniquely identify a car for the purposes of law enforcement was more important than my privacy because it enabled widespread use of this dangerous and strictly regulated machinery.
You can own a car without number plates, you just can't drive it on a public road. Presumably similar with this hypothetical kill switch. Requiring compliance with rules for access to a shared resource doesn't seem that ethically challenging when you think about it.
But police officers giving you stopping directions are already overriding your directions and taking control of your car, fully backed by law and and force if necessary. Only with a very inefficient implementation.
Two can play at this dumb game.
I'm guessing you're European. I've read that the relationship between the police and the public can be a bit .. blindly trusting. And I know that fugitives are disproportionately demonized in fiction.
I'd say you should concern yourself with problems on your side of the ocean and I'll do likewise. But looking at history says that's wishful thinking.
This is a serious question, is there some real scenario that hasn't occurred to me, where it's desirable for either Cruise/Waymo/Uber's remote control or the onboard AI to ignore stopping directives from the police?
Either that or I could argue we already have a killswitch like that - suspending your license - if I also go along with the idea that the cop won't flip your car when you're not running from them because that's also illegal.
So either we have a world where the system works or where it doesn't, but unfortunately we have both.
Except for all the times it's happened when people weren't running from them?
They already need to incase of ambulance or fire trucks behind them. That's a day one feature. You see emergency flashing lights you pull over until they pass you.
If they pull over behind you, then that's just a case of lights behind you, pull over and the car remains stopped.
Flashing lights to signal to pull over is one of the most unbreakable of all driving rules, you can't release a self driving car that can't handle that case.
Stopping would cause more harm than good if they're actually trying to get around you.
Just like a human driver is legally required to.