Properly outfitted, a self-driving vehicle will basically be a rolling surveillance unit. You could rob one, but you'd likely have quality HD footage of the entire incident from every angle. Who knows, maybe even precise measurements of their body courtesy of LIDAR.
I expect that insurance companies will eat the cost of hijackings, but push for more effective enforcement of existing laws, leveraging the surveillance capabilities of autonomous vehicles.
You also can't threaten a computer to stop it from immediately calling the police. A human driver might fear for his life and delay contacting the police until the encounter is over, but the computer driver could immediately call the police the moment it thinks it is being hijacked.
more likely, dial in to a call center run by the shipping company who would call in to the police. East Podunk County, Wyoming won't have a system installed to handle robo-calls as legitimate.
I expect that insurance companies will eat the cost of hijackings, but push for more effective enforcement of existing laws, leveraging the surveillance capabilities of autonomous vehicles.
You also can't threaten a computer to stop it from immediately calling the police. A human driver might fear for his life and delay contacting the police until the encounter is over, but the computer driver could immediately call the police the moment it thinks it is being hijacked.