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Do self-driving cars run red lights?

I’m really interested in the future of self-driving cars, but I’m a bit skeptical of some of the autopilot features. Do self-driving cars actually stop at red lights?

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Macy Fouse · Updated on
Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.
They’re definitely interesting! Currently, self-driving cars may run red lights. Their autopilot features have yet to prove consistent.
For this reason, most self-driving cars are still in beta testing and haven’t been rolled out for public use just yet.
Early self-driving models, like Uber’s fleet, were spotted running red lights (although Uber says differently) and were involved in several crashes while driving autonomously.
And in 2022, Tesla recalled 54,000 models due to faulty self-driving software that didn’t fully stop at stop signs. However, there is only one documented incident where a Tesla ran a stoplight in 2019.
Many hope that a future with driverless vehicles will lead to the end of traffic lights. In theory, each self-driving car will have vehicle-to-vehicle communication, allowing autonomous cars to interact with each other, especially at intersections.
While this works in simulations, there will be a mixture of human-driven cars and autonomous cars for many decades to come, so traffic lights are here to stay for a while.
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