Driverless Cars
A cyber-security war is coming for driverless cars.
With cyber security the first thing to understand is that the internet is ungovernable...
We have long used “governors” on powerful machines to protect them from self-destruction; that’s not possible with the internet.
It's a calm Saturday morning in August of next year. Suddenly, across the nation, 12,000 Tesla Model S sedans start up at the same time. They engage Tesla's vaunted autopilot feature and head out onto the road. Some of them make their way to local gas stations. Some to electrical substations. And then, as they approach, they accelerate to top speed. The explosions are fantastic as the Model S batteries rupture and spark fires, which ignite anything flammable in the area. The power grid in the Los Angeles area is brought down almost immediately. Hundreds of fires rage. America is under attack. This might sound like science fiction. It's not.
Having investigated my share of head-on collisions involving motor vehicles, I’ve come to realize that every time we meet another vehicle on an open rural ‘old-style' two lane roadway, we’re just a few feet from instant death. Divided highways are a little safer because we have more time to react to an errant oncoming threat, but virtually all of our highway’s are old and overcrowded. What kind of datum do we really want to introduce into this chaotic infrastructure?
Granted there may be some life-saving potential in automation, but there is also plenty of anecdotal evidence of its mutable nature.
/fl