Quote:
Originally Posted by SithCeNtZ
Two things here. The first is that yes, there will probably always be a bug, or something capable of going wrong. People are going to have to get over it and realise that a random software bug is still far less of a chance of death than a random drunk driver or some idiot who runs a red light. We can't let perfection be the enemy of better than what we have.
The second is that the hacking thing is completely nonsensical and a boogeyman from movies and TV shows. Basically every car today sold is mainly powered by a computer. Most modern safety functions of a car like adaptive cruise control and brake detection warnings are already run by a computer. Is there a massive wave of mysterious deaths due to cars doing random things? Of course not. Why would these magical hackers not be causing mayhem right now when it's certainly easier to do it today than it will be in a likely very highly regulated and monitored system 20 years from now? It's because "hacking" as people think of in the movies doesn't exist in this context. No one can upload a virus to your car and turn it into a death machine or else scorned ex-lovers would clearly resort to that rather than burying a body in a field somewhere with evidence all around.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty certain these driverless cars are networked (blue toothed, internet, whatever you want to call it), especially the cab company referenced in post 56 from San Francisco. I can not imagine any possibility of them turning a fleet of driverless cars loose without a central dispatch control.
Can you?
However, your normal consumer owned car, has a self contained, non networked computer. You would need to plug into it to hack it, similar to the service code reader.
Thus, the possibility of hacking driverless cars would be a very real possibility.