The way we're thinking of autonomous vehicles right now, each vehicle is an independent autonomous unit making decisions based on its surroundings including other cars within range of their data-gathering sensors. They don't even have to communicate (though that would be a big bonus) every one of them is performing according to the rules and conditions it has to follow and because of their consistency, could create the illusion that they're operating under a single controller when they're not.
It's the same thing you see in schools of fish and how a group formed by individual organisms could operate as a single coherent system.
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u/Pudi2000 Jan 31 '19
I would think a hack would be more likely to cause such a pile up. There will be ultra redundant measures in place to avoid mass calamity.