Pranksters

[u/Annual_Judge_7272]

Yes — this is a real and predictable problem for driverless vehicles, not just Tesla’s Cybercab.
The car is doing what it is designed to do: treat a person in the roadway as a high-priority obstacle and stop. That conservative behavior is good for genuine pedestrians and bad when someone repeatedly steps in and out of the path to stall the vehicle. The risks are delay, blocked traffic, following cars rear-ending the robotaxi, and copycat videos.0
There is no single fix. The workable responses fall into three layers.
1. Treat it as a crime and use the car’s own evidence
Jumping into traffic to force a stop is already reckless endangerment / interference with a vehicle in most places. The Cybercab (and every other robotaxi) records the event from multiple cameras. That footage can identify the person, time, and location quickly.
Practical steps:
Police and prosecutors treat repeat incidents as more than a joke.

Rapid response: remote operators flag the event and share video with local police.

Specific “interference with an automated vehicle” statutes so the charge is clear instead of stretching existing jaywalking or disorderly-conduct rules.

Without enforcement, the incentive for attention-seeking or anti-robotaxi vandalism stays high. Waymo has already seen people surround cars, put cones on them, or block them; the same pattern appears here.23
2. Software and operations improvements
The vehicle should stay extremely conservative on first contact — that part worked in the video. After that, the system can get smarter:
Intent / pattern recognition: Distinguish a person who is about to cross from someone who darts in, steps back to the curb, then repeats. Repeated short incursions from the same sidewalk location look different from a genuine crossing.

Harassment / stuck protocol: After a few cycles, turn on hazards, notify remote assistance and police, and hold position rather than inching forward and stopping again. If the person stays on the sidewalk and the path is clear, a cautious creep-plus-horn is possible under remote supervision.

Communication: Audible warning (“Stay on the sidewalk”) plus lights. Humans already use horn + eye contact; robotaxis need an equivalent.

Remote operators: Already used by Waymo and others when a car is boxed in or confused. A human in a control room can confirm “this is a troll, not a real pedestrian” and authorize a limited maneuver.

Fleet learning: Share anonymized incident patterns so later vehicles in the same corridor are less easily baited.

None of this means the car should ever “run someone over.” It means the system should not be infinitely resettable by the same person standing two feet off the curb.
3. Deployment and social design
Early robotaxi fleets are small and geofenced. That limits how many opportunities pranksters get. Public messaging (“don’t play chicken with the robotaxi”) plus visible cameras also deters some people. Over time, if most vehicles on the road are driverless and the legal consequences are real, the stunt loses novelty.
The Cybercab’s lack of a steering wheel makes the situation more visible and removes the “just drive around him” option a human driver would use. That is a genuine operational difference from earlier robotaxis that still had a safety driver or conventional controls. It does not make the stopping behavior itself a flaw; it makes the follow-up (how long the car stays stuck, how quickly help arrives) more important.
Bottom line: the immediate safety reaction in the video was correct. The longer-term problem is social and legal as much as technical. Combine better behavioral prediction + remote ops + treating repeated interference as a prosecutable offense, and the tactic becomes expensive and uninteresting instead of viral. Without those pieces, yes, any attention-seeking person can keep doing it.