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Emergency Vehicle Lights Can Screw Up a Car's Automated Driving System

Newly published research finds that the flashing lights on police cruisers and ambulances can cause “digital epileptic seizures” in image-based automated driving systems, potentially risking wrecks.

A new paper from researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu Limited demonstrates that when some camera-based automated driving systems are exposed to the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, they can no longer confidently identify objects on the road. The researchers call the phenomenon a “digital epileptic seizure”— epilepticar for short—where the systems, trained by artificial intelligence to distinguish between images of different road objects, fluctuate in effectiveness in time with the emergency lights’ flashes. A three-year investigation by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into the Tesla-emergency vehicle collisions eventually led to a sweeping recall of Tesla Autopilot software, which is designed to perform some driving tasks—like steering, accelerating, braking, and changing lanes on certain kinds of roads—without a driver’s help.

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