How Will Autonomous Cars Respond to Emergency Vehicles?

As we get closer to the widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles, there's still discussions about what sensors will be required to make these vehicles safe – for the passengers and other pedestrians and vehicles. Those discussions usually revolve around cameras, radar, LiDAR (Light Distance and Ranging), and ultrasonic. There's one other sensor that isn't discussed – an audio microphone. I recently experienced a situation that caused me concern over how well an autonomous car would handle emergency vehicle awareness. I was stopped at a red light in the left-hand turn lane on a local road.