Google Submits Patent For Emergency Vehicle Detection System

Since a fully autonomous vehicle is supposed to know how to respond in all traffic situations, Google went as far as to patent an emergency vehicle detection system meant to work together with their self-driving tech.

The patent, according to CNET, was submitted back in 2014 but was only published this month. The system itself is said to recognize unique flashing patterns from emergency lights, which in turn tell the self-driving car that a certain action needs to be taken. This action would usually involve simply pulling over and stopping until the emergency vehicle has passed.

Naturally, the way the system works will end up being a lot more complex than that since not all emergency lights mean that you need to pull over. For example, if your self-driving car comes across a police cruiser that just pulled over another motorist on the highway, stopping would not be the right thing to do.

Then there’s also the issue of people putting colored lights on their own cars. Most municipalities currently have laws regarding what types of lights you can put on vehicles – for example, you’re not allowed to add certain colors like blue or red.

We’d imagine these laws would need to be enforced even more once regular autonomous vehicles will start relying on recognizing emergency lights.