I've only got experience with aerial survey lidar, but "blinding" the photomultiplier with your own transmit pulse is pretty common, e.g. hitting something retr

I've only got experience with aerial survey lidar, but "blinding" the photomultiplier with your own transmit pulse is pretty common, e.g. hitting something retroreflective like a cats eye marker or a street sign. Even the sun off a puddle can do it too. It is a pretty obvious artifact to recognize and remove. I guess it would depend on the mechanism of the lidar (i.e. if it is scanning then what is the probability that the different cars are scanning at each other at the same time, probably low). Might be a problem if they use flash or geiger mode lidar. But then the pulse rate would be lower. Interesting to think about. I'm sure the people working on it would have an answer.