content: I don't think this will actually be a problem.  Lets look through everything that must happen for the government to do this:  Google has to provide a back door for the Government. (Probably won't happen because a backdoor for one is a backdoor for all, and lawyers will fight tooth and nail on this.  Expext $1Bn at least to be spent on lobbyists from Ford and Google) The government has to want to kill someone (Who do they want to kill?  Why?  Killing random people breeds civil unrest everywhere other than dystopian novels.  Better to just rig the system, and let them publicly complain all they want) People in the government would have to keep quiet about their peers killing random people.  (Do you really think that if spying was enough to cause a couple leaks and whistle blowers that unchecked murder wouldn't get brought into the open?  Media would be 100% all over that because that shit would sell like free crack) Given how cheap data storage is these days, I guarantee that a black box would show exactly what happened and would be easily review-able.  Think the police would sieze it?  Why not just remote back it up somewhere off site?    Google would be paying for insurance on these vehicles.  I doubt they would be happy with random cars killing their customers and increasing their payments (Does the government reimburse them?  Well, again you have the whistle blower problem as there are now even more people in accounting involved instead of just programmers and suits) Would you let a car drive you that has been known to kill it's passengers?  Were not talking about a single individual bad taxi driver, we are talking about a system where the taxis are 100% identical.  Were also not talking about a freak accident, we are talking about a car driving into a tree.  Basically, I think something like this would be so easily preventable and it would be known exactly who would be doing it that this is a non-issue. EDIT:  Also, these cars are going to be electric, so if the brakes aren't working, it will still be able to slow to a stop through electronic breaking. (regen of the motors) So the government wouldn't even be able to cut it's brakes.  The other things they could do wouldn't be specific to self driving cars, and could be preventable with better apps and software (which google would be incentivised by insurance and customer confidence to build)