Should police shoot at moving vehicles, including self-driving cars.
One of the most controversial policing topics that society wrestles with is whether law enforcement officers should be able to shoot at a moving vehicle.
Generally, three overarching opinions on the matter seem to have emerged on this weighty topic.
Some insist that such an act should never be permitted. As notable emphasis, that means that no matter what the circumstances might be, no police officer is to ever shoot at a moving vehicle, period, end of the story.
In somewhat of a contrast, others indicate that the act can be undertaken though only rarely, allowing that there would be extraordinary exceptions that merit such dire action.
And then some would state that such an act can be done in the performance of law enforcement duties, for which the officer will ultimately need to justify their actions, and that trying to stipulate a narrow prespecified range of when such action can be undertaken is improperly hampering the officer and putting their life at undue risk and potentially likewise putting other innocents at risk too.
In short, the three mainstay approaches might be described as:
a) Never allowed
b) Allowed rarely if ever
c) Allowed in due course as merited
For those in the “never allowed” perspective, they would typically argue that the moment that you accept the other two options to be considered, you are opening a Pandora’s box. To them, this is a strictly binary question and the answer is either that shooting at a moving vehicle is allowed or it is banned outright.
Once you progress into the allowed viewpoints, the “never allowed” would tend to say that you are going to have a slew of instances and that some might be bona fide and yet some will not be, and instead of enabling a chance of incurring the instances that are not bona fide, the better approach is to cut-off the option altogether.
In essence, beyond “never allowed” is a perceived slippery slope and thus the notion is to not allow any slippage potential at all, thus, stand fast on the precept that an officer should never ever shoot at a moving vehicle.
You might have recently heard or seen in the media a lot of vigorous dialogue and acrimonious debate about this rather contentious and problematic matter.
Recent news stories about policing have at times mentioned a campaign that is seeking to have police departments adopt eight policies, known as the “8 Can’t Wait” code.
One of the steadfast eight rules of the campaign is that officers should be banned from shooting at moving vehicles “in all cases” and that without such a policy there are “loopholes,” accordingly shooting at moving vehicles ought to be “categorically banned.”
You might be wondering what the law currently indicates about such matters.
Generally, US federal laws and guidelines follow the advisement of several related Supreme Court rulings, each of which tends to ultimately hinge on the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which you might recall states this: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In a 1985 ruling by the Supreme Court in the case of Tennessee v. Garner, and as it pertains to the Fourth Amendment meaning, a decision was rendered that if “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others,” the officer can use deadly force to prevent an escape by the suspect, but otherwise cannot do so when such conditions otherwise do not exist.
In short, this is a variant of the “allowed rarely if ever” and/or the “allowed in due course as merited” approaches, and decidedly is not the “never allowed” approach.
Other relevant Supreme Court decisions include Graham v. Connor (1989), Plumhoff v. Rickard (2014), Mullenix v. Luma (2015), and other such cases, all of which further refined or reinforced the key characteristics associated with the “allowed” circumstances.
Meanwhile, each of the states has at times opted to stipulate their own rules on the matter, presumably doing so in alignment with the overarching perspective rendered by the US Supreme Court.
Notice that the states can opt to adopt a “never allowed” rule if they wish to do so.
Furthermore, complicating the situation to some degree, there are approximately 18,000 law enforcement bodies throughout the US, and they too can stipulate their own rules, as long as they do so within the presumed bounds of their state rule and the US Supreme Court rulings.
The result has been criticized as an unwieldy mishmash.
Some police departments have adopted the “never allowed,” while others have adopted the “allowed” variants. Plus, over time, there are police departments that have shifted in the adoption of the rules and gone from one of the approaches to another one of the approaches.
This would seem to suggest that there are valid arguments to be made for whichever approach is chosen, though those within any particular approach are apt to strongly argue that theirs is the only truly valid approach and the others are plainly wrong.
Some though are conflicted and opt for a given approach, hopeful that it is the “best” choice in hand, and yet are willing to reconsider based on how things bear out, having a willingness to be open to change if changing seems worthwhile.
You might be wondering why there is such disparate opinion about the subject.
Let’s do a brief dive into the matter and see.
The Complexities Of Shooting At A Moving Vehicle
Unlike what you might see in the movies, shooting at a moving vehicle is not a simple action.
First, consider that a moving vehicle can be essentially a multi-ton deadly weapon in of itself. The vehicle can be used by a driver to rundown people, or smash into other cars, or ram into objects, etc.
Second, the driver of the moving vehicle might themselves be armed directly with a deadly weapon, perhaps possessing a handgun or brandishing their firearm, possibly even firing the weapon at those outside the vehicle, or threatening to shoot someone else within the vehicle.
In essence, there is a potential dual-threat, the threat of using the vehicle as a deadly weapon, and the threat potential of the driver being armed and using their weapon for deadly purposes too.
Suppose a police officer is standing in front of the vehicle and it is being driven in such a way that the driver appears to be intending to run over the officer.
Can the police officer use their firearm to try and shoot the driver?
In theory, the shooting of the driver will prevent the driver from running down the officer. But, trying to shoot and hit a driver that is in a moving vehicle is not a sure thing, and again not akin to what you see in movies and TV shows.
Some point out that the shots by the officer could hit and harm others inside the vehicle that might be either not bent on the apparent attempt to run over the officer or that are perhaps innocents that have been kidnapped essentially by the driver.
The shots could also ricochet or miss entirely and hit innocent bystanders.
Besides, even if the driver is hit by shots, the driver might still be able to drive the car, or they will be incapacitated and unable to drive, for which the car might then barrel out-of-control as a kind of now misguided weapon, perhaps running over bystanders, etc.
Perhaps the officer should be shooting at the vehicle, attempting to disable the car, rather than shooting at the driver, since the car itself is a bigger target and more likely able to be struck.
This is not quite as ready as a solution as you might assume. Conventional police firearms are not particularly likely to penetrate the vehicle sufficiently to somehow stop the engine or halt the car, and for those that think the tires should be shot out, it is much harder to flatten today’s tires by a bullet than might seem to be portrayed in fictional films.
As a counter-argument to the possibility of the officer’s bullets missing their intended target, those that are in the sometimes-allowed approach would likely say that if there is a chance to prevent the driver from otherwise killing or injuring people, it would seem a potentially worthwhile effort, and the situation at hand might in the balance save lives by the officer taking such actions.
Generally, there are lots of probabilities and uncertainties involved.
The “never allowed” perspective asserts that police officers should not be making those kinds of judgments and instead should consider taking some other action, but not be shooting at the vehicle.
Indeed, there is some that question why an officer allowed themselves to get into a posture that the driver can viably threaten to run them down, or that the officer can merely jump out of the path of the vehicle.
Others though counter-argue that it is not realistic to think that an officer would always be able to avoid getting caught in such a predicament, plus the viewpoint that the officer should just leap out of the way is exceedingly farfetched and not realistic.
The scenario of the officer getting rundown is only one sliver of the circumstances that might arise for those that are in the sometimes-allowed viewpoint.
Suppose the driver is steering toward the sidewalk and some pedestrians will likely get struck and rundown.
In this case, the officer might not be in imminent danger, but those innocent bystanders are.
Can the police officer use their firearm to try and shoot the driver?
When presented with this type of an example, many would oftentimes find themselves struggling to remain in the never-allowed rule, since they see the tradeoff of having the officer shoot to try and prevent a larger potential set of deaths, even if it means that the shots fired by the officer go astray or do not end-up preventing the mayhem, at least an attempt was made and had a chance of curtailing the full extent of the injury and deaths that might have ensued.
Notice too that these are usually life-or-death moments and must be acted upon in real-time, meaning that there is at times little or no time to consider all options and the uncertainties underlying them.
Ironically, one supposes, this lack of time and sense of urgency can be used by either side of the argument, namely the never-allowed stating that a spur of the moment decision should not be permitted, while the sometimes-allowed would argue that it showcases the need for flexibility and reliance upon the officer in-the-moment making a crucial possibly life-saving decision.
For any such situations whereby the officer might have acted in a life-saving manner, the never-allowed will typically counter-argue that this needs to be weighed against the instances of officers that miscomprehend the situation and make a wrongful choice, and also those instances in which “bad actor” officers opt to exploit the situation and make an intentionally aberrant choice that is intending for harm and was not warranted by the circumstances.
So far, we’ve not yet considered herein the facet of a driver that is shooting while driving the vehicle, which would certainly tend to up the ante on the use of dual deadly weapons.
A slew of other considerations might come to play.
Suppose the driver was known to have a criminal record that included the use of deadly force.
Suppose the driver is smashing into other cars and threatening the lives of people in those other vehicles.
Suppose a car chase is underway. Some would argue that there is no need to undergo a car chase and just let the driver proceed, catching the driver at some future occasion, though the counter-argument is that the driver might be prone to harming others in the interim to whenever they might later be caught.
Round and round the arguments go.
Another twist that is a doozie involves the use of a car as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).
Suppose the car is jampacked with explosives.
The driver might be seeking to use the car as more than a ramming device and be intending to cause a large amount of abhorrent destruction. Furthermore, it could be that the driver is willing to die in the act of doing so, being a suicide bomber, as it were.
Can the police officer use their firearm to try and shoot the driver?
This question overall about a police officer shooting at a moving vehicle is a daunting one and remains elusively unresolved by society.
Self-Driving Cars As A New Case
Shift gears and consider that we are gradually going to witness the advent of self-driving cars.
Here’s an intriguing question: How will AI-based true self-driving cars alter our viewpoints about the act of a police officer shooting at a moving vehicle?
Let’s unpack the matter and see.
First, as clarification, true self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5 (see my explanation at this link here), while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out, see my indication at this link here).
Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).
For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that despite those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Self-Driving Cars And Shooting At A Moving Vehicle
For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.
All occupants will be passengers.
The AI is doing the driving.
Upon initial thought, you might assume that since there isn’t a human driver, there would never be a need to consider shooting at a self-driving car.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Suppose that a passenger inside a self-driving car has a gun and is shooting at bystanders.
Can the police officer use their firearm to try and shoot the passenger?
It seems that we are not going to avoid the question, even when self-driving cars arrive.
You could use the same arguments as before, asserting that the officer’s shots might go astray, and thus you might still argue that the never-allowed is the right rule, or you might be in the sometimes-allowed perspective and indicate that if the circumstances seem applicable that the officer can go ahead and try to shoot the passenger, hopefully striking the passenger and stopping any subsequent carnage caused by the passenger using their weapon.
Some would quickly offer that the AI ought to be told via electronic communication to drive the vehicle to a remote spot and thus prevent the shooting passenger from harming anyone.
Well, that might work, but who will send such a directive, and meanwhile what about the passenger that is nonetheless still shooting at bystanders during that suggested journey?
For more details about the controversies and trade-offs in how to redirect or stop self-driving cars by authorities when perceived as so needed, see my indication at this link here.
Recall that earlier we had acknowledged that there is a dual weapon possibility, namely that the driver (now a passenger) could have a weapon, and likewise, the car itself could be used as a weapon.
Does the advent of self-driving cars at least though obviate the concerns about the self-driving car itself being used as a deadly weapon?
It might seem unthinkable that a self-driving car could somehow be used as a weapon in of itself. You would undoubtedly assume that the on-board AI system would be programmed to avoid hitting people and other cars, such that the AI would not allow the vehicle to be a weapon per se.
One supposes that if an officer stood in front of a self-driving car, it would dutifully automatically come to a halt or otherwise avoid hitting the officer, and therefore the car itself would no longer be actionable as a weapon.
Numerous scenarios belie that simplicity.
Suppose a self-driving car is going on the freeway at 65 miles per hour, there is a passenger shooting from within the vehicle, and it is known that the car is packed with explosives.
The self-driving car is indeed now a weapon, though the AI is not aware of this.
Note that today’s AI does not have any semblance of common-sense reasoning, it is not sentient, and the odds of the singularity happening anytime soon is slim at best (for my explanation about this, see the link here), so do not assume that the AI driving system will be all-knowing.
In short, the emergence of AI-based true self-driving cars is going to be encumbered by the same realities that we face today with conventional cars, though indubitably with a different set of twists and turns (including, for example, shooting at a self-driving car that has no passengers at all, which offers its own set of conundrums).
Conclusion
Most of the automakers and self-driving car tech firms would likely argue that this whole matter is an edge or corner case, meaning that it will rarely occur and does not need attention at this time, especially since they are immersed in just getting self-driving cars to drive in everyday circumstances safely.
Unfortunately, the real-world will ultimately catch-up with the extraordinary innovation of self-driving cars, and we will collectively need to answer some troubling and difficult ethical questions (for more on AI ethics, see my explanation here).
The advent of AI does not necessarily overcome tough ethical dilemmas and without doubt, has the potential for bringing new ones to the forefront.
