For a while, his Tesla Model Y was programmed to automatically roll past stop signs at up to 5.6 miles per hour without stopping if it sensed the coast was clear of pedestrians and others. If anything, Tesla’s experimental driver-assistance features could seem a little conservative to him…

Exactly when Tesla’s software started performing rolling stops isn’t entirely clear. Last September, a Tesla driver posted a video on social media of a rolling stop. And in January, Tesla released an “assertive mode” version of its “full self-driving beta,” a premium driver assistance option that featured rolling stops along with “smaller following distance” and a propensity to “not exit passing lanes.”

Tesla recently removed the rolling-stops feature with a software update, but the automaker has opened a question that the average driver may not have thought about: Should cars robotically obey traffic laws, even when human drivers sometimes break them for convenience?