Lil devils x said:
UGH. I have to wonder if anyone who thinks this is safe in any way actually understands ANYTHING about programming.
I'm a professional dev for my day job, so I'd say yes. And generally I agree with what you're saying. However we already have ( in the western world ) most of our critical infrastructure controlled & managed by computer, water, traffic management, planes, power ( inc. power generation ), our financial systems, pretty much all business on the planet, I could go on. Is it 'secure' no of course it's not, but the risk is managed.
Of course there is a risk, BMW recently had to announce a patch since in theory it was possible to destroy a car engine via smartphone. But by the same point there are huge known issues involving SCADA systems that run our power grid, nuclear power stations, and a bunch of other really scary stuff.
No it's not a minor issue, but it doesn't make or break the concept, if it did we would have much bigger problems on our hands. You don't have planes dropping out of the sky, or nuclear explosions, power outages, complete financial collapse etc as a regular occurrence due to hacking ( though yes it does happen, stuxnet being a prime example). Clearly managing this risk, ensuring that the proper systems and resources are in place is important, but it is possible to manage this risk. Far from the chaotic "wild west" which is often portrayed ( and I don't deny there is a consistent "arms race" in security dev on many, many levels ), it is currently possible to manage this.
Generally security considerations scale in importance. Sure heartbleed was an utter nightmare ( lots of lessons learned there! ), but you find as the importance/criticality of a system or information assets increases, as does the time,effort, resources & collaborative effort to keep it secure.
It comes down to this, Do I believe that driverless cars can be safe or not from a security standpoint? If I didn't I'd be living in a cabin in the woods, far away from flightpaths,roads,power stations, and pretty much anything that could kill me with a programming error ( including my bluetooth fridge... I know that thing hates me, I can tell)