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I understand your concern but right now 30k Americans die in car accidents. Will (potentially) hackable self-driving cars be any more dangerous than today? If
by deeg 9y ago
I understand your concern but right now 30k Americans die in car accidents. Will (potentially) hackable self-driving cars be any more dangerous than today? If you're that concerned about being involved in a car crash it seems to me that you should never leave the house.
- ori_b 9y ago> I understand your concern but right now 30k Americans die in car accidents. And a few thousdand died on September 11th, nearly 20 years ago. The collective fear from that made the world a far worse place than the actual death toll. If there's a terrorist attack that targets internet connected cars, what do you think the collective reaction might be?
- LinuxBender 9y agoPotentially, yes. Instead of 30k spread across one year, the very possible opportunity for 30k in one mass-hack exists. I will defer to others to debate this. Perhaps financial regulators, safety departments, transportation regulators, insurance companies, etc. This is a very complex topic that would quickly turn into banter here. Everyone will have to decide for themselves the risk factors as it pertains to them.
- deeg 9y agoThat's 30k potential deaths compared to 30k deaths right now, every year. If terrorist attacks on cars killed 20k/year it would still be much safer than our current situation. We should mandate that every vehicle death be broadcast on the front page of every national media outlet[1]; that might change our perceptions. I contend that 40 years from now our grandchildren will be astounded that we got into such dangerous vehicles before self-driving cars. [1] - I'm being facetious, of course.
- roywiggins 9y agoCrash all the self-driving ambulances, crash all the gasoline tanker trucks, crash all the trucks that ferry containers out of ports. You might not kill many people today, but when there's no shipping and no ambulance service people will start dying.
- jacquesm 9y agoIf you wanted to really disrupt society you don't need this level of sophistication or a lot of cash. A few thousand $ and a couple of months preparation time would be more than enough. Keep in mind that destruction and creation are extremely asymmetrical when it comes to the level of effort required.
- icc97 9y agoFacetiousness aside, this is where I hope car crashes would get to. They should be so rare that they do make the local news. They should be so rare we can treat them like airplane crashes and investigate each case to the same degree.
- paulcole 9y ago> the very possible opportunity for 30k in one mass-hack exists It's fortunate that terrorists are both very incompetent and very low in number. How else do you explain the fact that there's been exactly 1 very serious and successful foreign terror attack on US soil (the highest value target in the world) in the past 50-ish years? Currently there's the very possible opportunity of a power grid/infrastructure attack that could kill tens of thousands. But nobody should be truly worried about it. Terrorists just aren't that good at what they do. Why would they somehow be better at hacking cars than they are at anything else?
- brokenmachine 9y agoWhy are you only talking about "foreign" terror attacks? The Oklahoma bomber killed 168, for example. The first one that came to my mind.
- paulcole 9y agoWell our domestic terrorists aren't that successful or competent either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States Most news organizations report on foreign and domestic terror differently. When the average American thinks of a terrorist it isn't a white guy with a U-Haul.
- LinuxBender 9y agoTerrorists? Try 12 year old angst filled kids that get bullied in school and/or at home. How many 10 to 17 year old angst filled kids have access to the internet?
- ABCLAW 9y agoThe issue isn't the 30k people dying in one set of crashes. It is the systemic issue caused if all of our transportation and shipping capacity went offline at the same time as all ICE refuel capacity in a nation was taken offline at the same time. If that happens, car crashes aren't the problem - it's the widespread famine that follows in a week's time.
- Balgair 9y agoIt's not even the tinfoil-hat issue, it's standard emergency issues. Think of the damage a hurricane does to wide swaths of coastal land. Think of being trapped in Napa last fall during the firestorms. Think of a bad blizzard or a lucky lightning bolt to the right transformer. At least once a year, I think there is a sizable portion of the US population, let alone world population, that needs unconnected emergency ready transport in under 2 days notice. Expecting people to pay $30k+ for a car and not have that baked-in is a no-go.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]