Tesla’s Cybercab exposes a robotaxi emergency-response problem

For the self-driving car industry, first responder guidance is a collective action problem. Tesla’s Cybercab, a gold-tinted self-driving sedan outfitted with doors that eject sideways and upward, officially hit the road earlier this month. In some cities, the vehicles have mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, while in others, like Austin, they’ve begun accepting rides and offering autonomous service. Like myriad other Elon Musk projects, the cars have polarized the public. But they’ve also raised concerns from firefighters and police officers who wonder how they’ll deal with robotaxis in emergencies, highlighting the new challenges raised by the self-driving car era. Indeed, new guidance released by the company outlines a series of new responsibilities for first responders who might interact with Cybercabs in an emergency. When they arrive on the scene of an accident, Tesla says, a firefighter might need to call two different support numbers and wait for a company staffer to connect with the vehicle. The instructions also say that law enforcement may need to reach out to the company if they want Tesla to enact a geofence—basically, a software command that bans a self-driving car …