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And a stalled/wrecked/slowed vehicle on a highway sometimes results in death: http://i.imgur.com/dgHm3E9.gifv http://i.imgur.com/dgHm3E9.gifv [redundant warnin

by biot 11y ago

And a stalled/wrecked/slowed vehicle on a highway sometimes results in death: http://i.imgur.com/dgHm3E9.gifv http://i.imgur.com/dgHm3E9.gifv [redundant warning: death] http://i.imgur.com/V6aySGy.gifv http://i.imgur.com/V6aySGy.gifv You can't control for other bad drivers' reactions to your vehicle becoming an obstacle on the highway. Swerve and change lanes? Sure, in an ideal world that always happens. In the real world, accidents can happen instead.

fineman 11y ago
Yes, it could. A vaccine could kill a child. A meteor could crush the HN server as I post this. But is it even remotely likely? No. Of course not. Discussing it is pointless and counterproductive. It's not like you've been down the list of likely harms-sorted-by-danger and reached this one.
- Retric 11y ago
  Let's say there is a low chance of death from doing this: 1:10:000. Arguably that's about the same as sending someone to jail for 1:10,000th their life. Which is about 2 and 1/2 days which is not ‘horrific’. Still, I would hope sending a random person to prison for a few days to stage a story seems unacceptable. On the other hand vaccinations are both lower risks and a higher benefit so it’s not really comparable.
  - fineman 11y ago
    It's not like they slammed on the brakes - they cut engine power. Totally different. The car gently glided to a stop. Add four or five more zeros and you'll be in the ballpark. And if you're serious about saving lives, consider that this is a trivial fix (unplug the sim card) and the car company has known about this for months since these researchers told them about it. These a non-zero chance that this attack could be broadly deployed at any time, causing a sizable portion of the 500,000 vulnerable vehicles (those in traffic) to almost certainly crash - probably into other vehicles, etc. The researchers caused some non-zero but incredibly minor amount of risk for some people to save a vastly larger group from a vastly greater risk. This is why you sounds like anti-vaxxers. Even discussing this at all is a total failure of proportion. Yes - the 'risk' of vaccination might be non-zero but it's less than the risk of Polio by many orders of magnitude.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      You are unqualified to determine the level of risk that was imposed on the other drivers. You have no idea how many zeros to add or remove to how likely an accident was to result from this. I'm not sure there exists a person that could give an accurate representation beyond generalities, so please don't present yourself as this person. The point, the only point, really, that people have with their actions is that they endangered other people on purpose and without their consent. I wouldn't defend someone weaving between cars in traffic and leaving inches between bumpers doing so (I'm sure many of us have seen this) for the exact same reason. There are far too many variables to accurately account for, so they are raising the risk to all the people around them. Even an expert driver can't claim to know how every other driver on the road will react. That the researchers did this for what I'm sure most of us believe is a good reason is irrelevant, given there were alternatives. They made a judgement call, and now we are all upset at their poor judgement.
      - fineman 11y ago
        > They made a judgement call, and now we are all upset at their poor judgement. Yeah, unreasonably so. But, I get that you're upset. > You are unqualified to determine the level of risk that was imposed on the other drivers. I think anyone who has driven is at least somewhat qualified to determine the level of risk in common scenarios. The Jeep didn't even apply its brakes. > You have no idea how many zeros to add or remove to how likely an accident was to result from this. It was a rough guess, but I did try to check it. 1:10,000 common interactions becoming fatal accidents would depopulate the earth rapidly. > I'm not sure there exists a person that could give an accurate representation beyond generalities, so please don't present yourself as this person. Oh I see, and when you'd told everyone else that they weren't experts you got around to me. Okay, well, sure. In that case.
    - biot 11y ago
      > Add four or five more zeros and you'll be in the ballpark. So the 1:10,000 should be between 1:100,000,000 and 1:1,000,000,000? You're saying that, on average, between one hundred million and one billion vehicles would need to pass a stopped vehicle on the highway before causing an accident? Sorry, but if your arguments previously strained credibility this takes the cake.

by biot 11y ago

fineman 11y ago

Yes, it could. A vaccine could kill a child. A meteor could crush the HN server as I post this. But is it even remotely likely? No. Of course not. Discussing it is pointless and counterproductive. It's not like you've been down the list of likely harms-sorted-by-danger and reached this one.

Retric 11y ago
Let's say there is a low chance of death from doing this: 1:10:000. Arguably that's about the same as sending someone to jail for 1:10,000th their life. Which is about 2 and 1/2 days which is not ‘horrific’. Still, I would hope sending a random person to prison for a few days to stage a story seems unacceptable. On the other hand vaccinations are both lower risks and a higher benefit so it’s not really comparable.
- fineman 11y ago
  It's not like they slammed on the brakes - they cut engine power. Totally different. The car gently glided to a stop. Add four or five more zeros and you'll be in the ballpark. And if you're serious about saving lives, consider that this is a trivial fix (unplug the sim card) and the car company has known about this for months since these researchers told them about it. These a non-zero chance that this attack could be broadly deployed at any time, causing a sizable portion of the 500,000 vulnerable vehicles (those in traffic) to almost certainly crash - probably into other vehicles, etc. The researchers caused some non-zero but incredibly minor amount of risk for some people to save a vastly larger group from a vastly greater risk. This is why you sounds like anti-vaxxers. Even discussing this at all is a total failure of proportion. Yes - the 'risk' of vaccination might be non-zero but it's less than the risk of Polio by many orders of magnitude.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    You are unqualified to determine the level of risk that was imposed on the other drivers. You have no idea how many zeros to add or remove to how likely an accident was to result from this. I'm not sure there exists a person that could give an accurate representation beyond generalities, so please don't present yourself as this person. The point, the only point, really, that people have with their actions is that they endangered other people on purpose and without their consent. I wouldn't defend someone weaving between cars in traffic and leaving inches between bumpers doing so (I'm sure many of us have seen this) for the exact same reason. There are far too many variables to accurately account for, so they are raising the risk to all the people around them. Even an expert driver can't claim to know how every other driver on the road will react. That the researchers did this for what I'm sure most of us believe is a good reason is irrelevant, given there were alternatives. They made a judgement call, and now we are all upset at their poor judgement.
    - fineman 11y ago
      > They made a judgement call, and now we are all upset at their poor judgement. Yeah, unreasonably so. But, I get that you're upset. > You are unqualified to determine the level of risk that was imposed on the other drivers. I think anyone who has driven is at least somewhat qualified to determine the level of risk in common scenarios. The Jeep didn't even apply its brakes. > You have no idea how many zeros to add or remove to how likely an accident was to result from this. It was a rough guess, but I did try to check it. 1:10,000 common interactions becoming fatal accidents would depopulate the earth rapidly. > I'm not sure there exists a person that could give an accurate representation beyond generalities, so please don't present yourself as this person. Oh I see, and when you'd told everyone else that they weren't experts you got around to me. Okay, well, sure. In that case.
  - biot 11y ago
    > Add four or five more zeros and you'll be in the ballpark. So the 1:10,000 should be between 1:100,000,000 and 1:1,000,000,000? You're saying that, on average, between one hundred million and one billion vehicles would need to pass a stopped vehicle on the highway before causing an accident? Sorry, but if your arguments previously strained credibility this takes the cake.