As part of an investigation by U. S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), autonomous-vehicle operators Tesla, Waymo, and others have made public some details about how their supposedly driverless cars can be remotely assisted or controlled under certain circumstances. In a report published on Apr. 8, Andrea Guzman of the Austin American-Statesman described how the companies reluctantly shared some but not all the information Sen. Markey requested. Specifically, they refused to say how often such interventions take place.
It was a surprise to me, though it probably shouldn't have been, that autonomous-vehicle firms have staffs of remote operators ready to take control of a car or truck that gets into trouble. It's a given that every such vehicle is in continuous wireless communication with "headquarters," whatever that amounts to. And when the onboard systems determine that the situation the vehicle is facing is beyond its capabilities, it's reasonable that it sends an alert to headquarters to flag a human being to take a look and decide what ought to be done. But in at least a few situations, the human-assisted decisions haven't been all they should be.
For example, an investigation by a safety agency found that a remotely-operated Waymo vehicle illegally passed a school bus where children were boarding. Apparently, the Waymo remote assistance operators do not take direct control of the vehicle, but merely guide it in making its own decisions.
Tesla's process of remote assistance seems to be more assertive. In responding to Sen. Markey's inquiry, Tesla revealed that in rare cases, their remote assistance operators can take direct control of the vehicle, but its speed is limited to either 2 or 10 MPH, depending on whether the internal automated system grants direct control to the human controller.
That makes it sound like the final decision is up to the machine, not the human. Whatever the details, the fact that human remote assistants are sometimes involved in driverless car control adds another layer to the already complex mixture of responsibilities involved.
Both Tesla and Waymo emphasized that the remote assistants do not sit there watching each car passively. For one thing, there are too many cars to monitor. Waymo revealed that by spreading the work among staff in the U. S. and the Philippines, they can maintain about 70 remote assistance operators on duty at any given time. Tesla's operators are all in the U. S., and presumably work day and night shifts. They all have valid U. S. driver licenses for at least three years prior to employment, for what that is worth.
The information that all companies queried refused to reveal was how often it happens that remote-assistance operators intervene in a vehicle's operation. Perhaps justifiably, they claim that is a trade secret that might compromise their competitive position. My guess is that they have a pretty good idea of what the competition is doing, but they don't want the competition to know that. Until it becomes an issue in a court case, then, we'll just have to guess at whether the driverless vehicle you see cruising down the street is truly on its own, or is being supervised from Palo Alto or Manila.
The mixing of autonomous and human control is going to become more urgent in the future as more and more systems become capable of running themselves. Less than two weeks ago, on Apr. 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that for the first time, his soldiers captured an enemy position using only remotely-controlled equipment, namely unmanned drones and "ground robotic systems," meaning armed robots.
This historic achievement speaks volumes for the progress that Ukraine has made in developing agile, cost-effective military technology that augments their strength in human troop numbers. After four years of war against a numerically superior foe, the Ukrainians have become world leaders in such technology, motivated by one of the strongest reasons around: survival. It is a truism in the history of technology that wars advance technical developments faster than peace does, and the Ukrainians have shown its validity once again.
For years, much ink has been spilled in engineering ethics journals about the dangers of autonomous warfare. While this may not seem to have much to do with remote assistance for Waymo and Tesla, the two cases are extremes on a continuum. In the case of peacetime vehicles, you want the machinery to do what it's supposed to do benignly without hurting anybody, but in cases where there is potential danger, you want the human backup person to intervene. In the case of autonomous warfare, you want to damage and destroy the enemy and its resources, but you don't want the autonomous systems going haywire and attacking your own troops.
Getting back to remotely-assisted civilian vehicles, it appears that the operating companies have found a comfortable medium between the extremes of completely autonomous operation—no humans involved anywhere along the line—and what would amount to a remote-control cabdriver, namely one remote assistant dedicated to each vehicle full-time. Their comfort zone appears to be a mix of mostly automated control, but some manual control in emergencies.
While it would be nice to know more details, in a free market it's up to the firms themselves to decide the optimum mix, and they seem to want to keep the details to themselves. Until there's a major lawsuit in which the remote-assistant issue becomes a critical factor, we may not learn a lot more about it.
The question of responsibility is fundamental in engineering ethics. With the rise of all sorts of autonomous systems that are not quite autonomous, the question gets complicated. The best we can do is to learn as much as we can about how things are actually done, so when problems arise the public and regulatory agencies are not kept in the dark about where responsibility may really lie.
And whether it's a Waymo car or an armed robot capturing an enemy soldier, it's a little comforting to know that humans are still at the top of the command structure, however remotely. Unless I'm the soldier—then it may not matter.
Sources: Andrea Guzman's article "Self-driving cars still rely on humans—but how often remains unclear" appeared in the Austin American-Statesman on Apr. 8, 2026 at https://www.statesman.com/business/article/tesla-waymo-remote-operators-self-driving-cars-22192151.php. I also referred to an article describing the Ukrainian remote-controlled capture of a Russian position at https://www.politico.eu/article/volodymyr-zelenskyy-robotic-systems-russia-army-positions-ukraine/.
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