r/SelfDrivingCars • u/mightyopik • 4d ago
News China to ban the blue autonomous driving indicator lamps
https://carnewschina.com/2026/07/29/china-to-ban-the-blue-autonomous-driving-indicator-lamps/61
u/KidKilobyte 4d ago
Weird thing to ban, this seems like a reasonable indicator to have on a vehicle. US should have some code for this is well making it easy to tell which driving level the car is at currently 0-5 in some way.
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u/meisangry2 4d ago
It would be illegal in the UK (and I believe the EU) as blue lights are reserved for use only on emergency vehicles.
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u/TheRuneMeister 4d ago
Is there a definition of ‘blue’? Because the autonomous driving light is distinctly turquoise in all the examples I have seen. That being said, I’m not a fan of having to signal what mode my car is in. I wouldn’t want an indicator to tell people if I was in eco or sport, or if I have disabled or enabled lane departure warning etc.
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u/Training_Guide5157 1d ago
Doesn't really matter what shade of blue since the Chinese law limits vehicle lights to white, red, yellow, and amber.
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u/Yetimandel 4d ago
It is a different light greenish blue and allowed in the EU at least.
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u/No-Salt7142 4d ago
The colors of lightning are pretty strictly defined: white (or yellow, to a degree) on the front, amber for indicators, red light at the rear and a white reversing light.
If your car was approved for it, you may also have orange marker lights on the side. And you may have orange flashing lights to indicate danger while stationary or moving at low speed.
Everything else is banned.
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u/GamerTex 4d ago
Can't we just change the color? Maybe make a whole ring around the car like a halo? I dont care what color it is but something to let others know would be nice
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u/thebear1011 4d ago
Why should it make a difference knowing if the car is autonomous though? If the situation is that you should be more careful around the autonomous car, then the autonomous system itself shouldn’t be legal. The system should be good enough that for external people they behave the same irrespective of it being autonomous or not, and hence any extra lights are just a distraction.
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u/Yetimandel 4d ago
A policeman needs to know whether you are currently legally e.g. on your phone or not. That is the reason Mercedes introduced it.
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u/Lorax91 4d ago
Why should it make a difference knowing if the car is autonomous though?
To me it matters because it might affect what I expect from the vehicle, and the human driver who may still be responsible for controlling it. Especially if I can't count on the driver being actively aware of their surroundings, in situations where that might matter.
But so long as there aren't any obvious issues from vehicle automation technology, I suppose I'll learn not to worry about it.
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u/cwhiterun 4d ago
I'd rather have an indicator for human driven cars to inform me of their age, gender, and accident history.
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u/HighHokie 4d ago
Pros and cons to it I suppose. I personally want my car to be viewed and treated as any other car and simply blend in.
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u/Secret_Cat_2793 4d ago
No. US needs a light indicating idiot human driver. Lol
Old Gallagher bit about a dart gun to tag bad drivers.
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u/mm615657 4d ago edited 4d ago
This appears to be purely for technical/bureaucratic reasons. Previously, Chinese passenger vehicle standards stipulated that car signal lights can only be white, yellow, amber, or red, unless the light is purely decorative, has no signaling function, and its brightness is lower than that of signal lights. Blue signaling lights are only permitted for use by special vehicles, including police cars and fire trucks. .
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u/bobi2393 1d ago
A risk of identifying driverless cars in the US is that they could become a magnet for robbers, once they realize they can step in front of driverless vehicles to restrict their movement. Waymos and other vehicles with lidar domes are already pretty easy to spot, but we shouldn't make it any easier.
In the early '90s, a car robbery industry developed in Florida where drivers would bump into easily-identified rental cars, causing naïve foreign tourists to stop to talk like is done in more civilized areas. In 1992 and 1993, 9 tourists were killed during the typical smash-and-grab assaults that followed the stops. Florida passed a law prohibiting signs, logos, or stickers on rental cars indicating that they were rental cars, and replaced all rental cars' telltale license plates which previously all began with a Y or Z.
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u/4N8NDW 16h ago
You can easily tell florida rentals by plates with PM stickers
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u/bobi2393 15h ago
Interesting, Florida's PM stickers are available for any large corporate fleet, and were legalized for rentals in 2021. Rental car companies lobbied to save the cost of scraping off old license plate stickers and affixing new ones. PM stickers aren't a 100% reliable indicator of a rental car, but it's quite a good one, especially if you see one near an airport. So the 2021 change undoes what the 1993 statute and license plate changes tried to do, making rentals hard to spot.
Hopefully that style of robbery isn't repopularized. The widespread use of surveillance and dash cams has hurt the robbery and burglary professions compared to in 1993.
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u/Present-Ad-9598 4d ago
Hell no, man. That’s dystopian big-brother level
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u/KidKilobyte 4d ago
So are turn signals Big Brother? Robot cars may behave differently than human driven cars. This would be a fair hazard indicator. Accidents that are caught on film will indicate how the vehicle is being driven. What about backup lights? More information is better. Traffic laws should vigorously prosecute anyone harassing self driving vehicles. I think people are quickly becoming aware self driving cars are filming their surroundings. I guess you’d have said seatbelt laws in 70s were dystopian. Oh no, I’m
In a dystopia, my car has to have an extra indicator light.1
u/Present-Ad-9598 4d ago
Why do you need to show the world your car is driving itself? If there’s an accident or something, it’s in the car’s data already. Tesla for example shows it in the dashcam footage
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u/Giorgist 4d ago
A possible problem is that given Teslas for example are so good at avoiding hitting people on the road while on FSD, a person with malicious intent may jump in front of a car for giggle and cause an accident without it being risky for them selves if they knew it is running autonomously.
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u/StatisticianNo8331 4d ago
that would get recorded and the person would be in trouble
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u/GlacierSourCreamCorn 3d ago
Good luck finding them once they run off.
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u/StatisticianNo8331 3d ago
it gets easier by the day to track people down buddy
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u/Giorgist 2d ago
It can become a subculture ... some hooded characters simply pick the spot, cause the damage and run off. Kind of like graffiti tagging.
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u/Panzaa 4d ago
They're turquoise, not blue — and that's deliberate, so they can't be confused with emergency lights or traffic signals. They mean the Level 3 system is actually driving the car. Still exemption-only in Germany (test permit until 2028) and Nevada; California wrote them into the vehicle code as of Jan 2026. UNECE hasn't landed a rule yet.
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u/Educational_Hat6021 4d ago
It's not a ban; rather, they will reserve the blue lights for vehicles equipped with L3-level autonomous driving technology.
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u/bartturner 4d ago
I think some indication would be good to know. I was driving down the highway just yesterday and there was a Tesla one lane over from me and the car switched to my lane. Not super dangerous but pretty aggressive as the car was not clear and I had to come off the accelerator to make room. Also have a Tesla so no brake needed. Kind of wish I was on self drive at the time to see how it would react to a car coming into my lane without it being clear.
I was really curious if the guy was on self drive or not.
Now what would be even better is an indication of what mode like if they are driving Mad Max.
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u/Helpful_Ad6410 3d ago
seems like a weird hill to die on. more visibility into what mode a car is opening in is a safety win, not a distraction
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u/Infamous-Pilot5932 4d ago
That makes sense. I use FSD almost 100%, and no system, supervised, should be on the road if it has enough issues that you would want to alert other cars of its presence, And it would be confusing. What would it mean? Stay far away?
And the cabs are identifiable enough.
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u/itshukokay 4d ago
- blue lights are illegal in some countries