Interesting. I asked because it seems to me that the only way to know how reliable particular assassination means are is to have tried them out, with the full

Interesting. I asked because it seems to me that the only way to know how reliable particular assassination means are is to have tried them out, with the full resources of a wealthy country's intelligence organization at one's disposal. There are no doubt trade-offs with either approach. A car accident produces a strong explanatory narrative that can be used to squelch "conspiracy theories". Merely disappearing (as the persistence of POW/MIA organizations proves) provides no such benefit. So, from a consequences perspective, a successful "apparent accident" hit is better than an obviously foul-play one, or even a disappearance. The trade-off, as you have thoughtfully articulated, is one of practicalities. It's not particularly difficult to imagine that a wealthy espionage org would have developed reliable methods for making hits that look like accidents (for narrative squelching reasons). We know, now, from the declassified histories of these organizations how elaborate and sophisticated their techniques and tools can be. Might they have some "turn-key", field-refined method of taking remote control of a vehicle? If you were running such an organization, would you want such a capability? Given what we already know about the attack surface of vehicle control systems, if you had a large budget and a team of smart and motivated engineers, do you think you could develop this capability in a way that would work well enough for most modern cars? In the Hastings case, even serious injury might have been an adequate outcome (perhaps this was an time-sensitive situation?). I agree: certainly, for a one-off offing, the practicalities would be a major execution obstacle, making the scenario highly implausible. But killing people is one of the things these organizations do for a living -- the practicalities might well have been dealt with years ago. If they have done so (as they should if they're half-competent) then the highest expected value method changes considerably.