Item — HN Reader

I agree with all of this.

I would also add; that I will stay consider these vehicles to be unsafe until the manufacturers can prove to be beyond a shadow of doubt that I or the local computer are the ones piloting the vehicle.

When a random person can remotely take control of a vehicle; whether it be the windshield wipers, or full control of the vehicle, then it is not safe to contain a power source in the vehicle near a public road. I don't want 4chan driving me into another vehicle.

1 comments

I'd consider autonomous cars to be more safe than a car I drive when statistically I'm less likely to get hurt or die.

If there was some chance my car could get hacked, or other weird vulnerabilities that robocars had that traditional cars did not, I would still want to be in a robocar if my chance of dying was cut in half.

Sure. But you are assuming a good way to estimate that chance. Say you base it on previous performance: in the last 5 years, twice as many people have died driving non-self-driving cars compared to those riding self-driving cars. Then, the very next day, a massive hack / cyberattack happens that causes 10 million fatal accidents...

Getting targeted for a hack isn't a purely random thing though.

It may be true that the chance for an average person to get targeted multiplied by the chance for a targeted person to get their car hacked is lower than the chance of dying while driving yourself, but that's not reassuring at all if you think you have a higher than normal chance of being targeted or are already being targeted. From experience of being on the receiving end, it's really not that hard to piss off 4chan or get unwanted attention from other crazed parts of the internet. (For an extreme case, consider a certain pizza place in the news lately...)

This is going to be one of those things where a lot of people have trouble quantifying the actual risk because the fear when things are out of your control is so powerful. Like flying.

Not to mention, the live hacks of moving vehicles have already occurred multiple times. Thankfully, there are not yet enough skiddie tools and the bar to entry is just high enough that mass casualties have not yet occurred. Give it a few more months or maybe even another year before your car is just another IoT that can be controlled remotely. I do not believe it would be irrational to consider the risk of 100k cars driving into oncoming traffic at the same time. That is a lot more damage and chaos than a few little 747's could do. Am I incorrect?

My only questions are

1) will the skiddie tools be on github first, or will someone have to buy/leak them and repost on github?

2) If a minor executes the scripts and lives are taken; and assuming you can determine who ran them, will they be tried as adults and will the verdict or punitive actions make up for the damages?