Authorization and authentication will be the main challenge to solve here: who is authorized to issue those signals to the automated driver, and how are they authenticated so that malicious actors aren’t able to hijack the automated driver.
We haven't exactly solved that issue for human drivers. People impersonate police in order to commit crimes.
How much more problematic is it with autonomous vehicles? I could see action here just because it is a threat to the property of large corporations, though.
People exercise coordination ability like this all the time.
I got stuck getting out of shoreline after a large concert with abnormal parking conditions, and when we didn't move for 30 minutes I got out of the car and directed traffic so both lots could empty equally. Took another 45 minutes for my family to catch up to me, which was good because that's when someone in a safety vest showed up and told me to stop.
Firemen have access keys to various things. You could have a Waymo device for the same that similarly facilitates an override. Or at the very least provides a line with a manual operator that can override on the Waymo side.
As far as I know the driverless operators already have manual operators that can be contacted by emergency services. In some cases there seem to be human communication failures on top of the driverless failures.
