It's 2025 and more than 10% of the cars on the road in the US are self-driving. It's rush hour on a busy Friday afternoon in Washington, DC. Earlier that day, there'd been a handful of odd reports of self-driving Edsels (so as not to impugn an actual model) going haywire, and the NTSB has started its investigation.

But then, at 430pm, highway patrol units around the DC beltway notice three separate multi-Edsel phalanxes, drivers obviously trapped inside, each phalanx moving towards the Clara Barton Parkway, which enters DC from the west. Other units notice four more phalanxes, one comprising 20 Edsels, driving into DC from the east side, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

At this point, traffic helicopters see similar car clusters, more than two dozen, all over DC, all converging on a spot that looks to be between the Washington Monument and the White House.

We zoom in on the headquarters of the White House Secret Service. A woman is arguing vociferously that these cars have to be stopped before they get any closer to the White House. A colleague yells back that his wife is one of those commandeered cars and she, like the rest of the "hackjacked" drivers and passengers is innocent.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon

A related scenario, one that theoretically could happen today, is hacking into commercial airliners auto-pilot systems, and directing dozens of flights onto a target.

Set aside the fantasy movie plot angle, how realistic is this today? Is it any more or less plausible than the millions of cars scenario? If people are truly concerned about the car scenario, shouldn't they be worrying about the aircraft scenario?

Yes, the autopilots can be turned off, but that's just a button, probably a button on the autopilot itself. Depending where the infection happens, the actual position of the yoke could be entirely ignored by the software. Or the motor controllers for the control surfaces themselves could be driving the plane, though I don't know how they could coordinate their actions and get feedback from an IMU.

Perhaps the pilots could rip out components and cut cables fast enough to prevent the plane from reaching its destination, and maybe they could tear out the affected component and limp back to a runway with what remains, but it's an entirely feasible movie plot.

But should we actually worry about either? No. The software sourcing, deployment and updating protocols at the various manufacturers of aircraft are certain to be secure. Right?

This gives us the classic reassuring response from Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter :

"There are places where the networks are not touching, and there are places where they are," she said.

http://www.wired.com/2008/01/dreamliner-security/

Airplaine components tend to have shitloads of fuses for each components, any trained pilot knows how to disable the fuse for the autopilot system (or, in an extreme case, ALL fuses to kill the entire airplane).

And

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy3nXXZgqmg

TL;DR you simulate a bunch of other planes in close proximity and the auto-pilot freaks out and tries to avoid them. As the second talk explains, the pilots would definitely notice and switch autopilot off. This is why IMO it's very important to not take ultimate control away from humans in cars. I would personally never buy one of the Google (or any other) self-driving models with no controls. It already freaks me out that many cars are drive-by-wire (for the accelerator), and now even steer-by-wire: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/electric-feel-nissan-di... #noThankYouPlease

Another reason traffic spoofing wouldn't cause the aircraft to deviate is that airliners fly standard approaches and departures (STAR [1] and SID [2]) and heavy traffic away from the approach paths would definitely get noticed.

Even the fly-by-wire Airbus can be flown manually using differential thrust and/or pitch trim control.

The only time I've heard of an Airbus loosing control of a damaged engine is when the electrical cable was physically severed. This was Qantas QF32 [1], after one engine exploded and damaged the cables to another engine.

To "take over" an aircraft with pilots in the cockpit, would require the compromise to multiple systems.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_terminal_arrival_rout...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_instrument_departure_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32

Google cars have the Big Red Button, which shuts off self-driving system and brings the car to a stop.

What more controls do you need?

Urmson talks about it here: https://youtu.be/Uj-rK8V-rik?t=14m3s

It won't matter if all the other cars on the road besides yours don't have controls.

On the other hand on EFI car, having mechanical throttle cable does not add much to hack-safety as the ECU always has some way to override closed throttle (either disengaging throttle pedal mechanically switches the control of throttle to ECU operated servo or there is completely separate throttle controlled by ECU).

I would imagine that any pilot would figure out what was going on, unless it was on an incredibly foggy day.

Although looking at the other comments, I think I'm significantly underestimating just how much of modern airliners is dependent on software. The pilots might be able to see that they're heading for disaster, but may not be able to do anything about it.

There is an idea of triple channel autolanding, wherein the plane uses the consensus of the three autolanding systems. Should no consensus be available, then the pilot is advised that autolanding is not available.

Other than that, any sourcing from different manufacturers is happenstance. 737 avionics are sourced from a different vendor than 747/757/767/777. And different functions can come from different vendors, although vendor consolidation has cut down on that.

I'm not across what happened post 777, as I left Boeing in 1999.

>It's rush hour on a busy Friday afternoon in Washington, DC.

>each phalanx moving towards the Clara Barton Parkway

>all converging

DC rush hour? Moving cars? Please. Independence Day made me suspend less disbelief.

You see, with an internal combustion engine, there are several ways that you can stall the engine, even if the computer is controlling it. As long as you can stop it from rotating, it will stall.

Now, take a Leaf. The engine can't physically stall. It is completely controlled by electronics – in contrast, even an ICE with an engine control unit will have some of it being driven mechanically (valves and driveshaft are all mechanical). This also causes cars to "creep" when you release the brakes, as the engine has to keep rotating. In the Leaf, the "creep" exists, but it is entirely simulated.

Similarly, the steering is also electric and controlled by algorithms (more assist in parking lot, less in the highway).

Braking is also software-controlled. The first ones had, as people called them, "grabby breaks" (it would use regenerative breaking with a light force, if you pressed more, the breaks would suddenly "grab" the wheel). This was fixed in a software update.

Turning on and off is also a button. Can't yank the keys either.

So yeah, presumably, a Leaf could turn on, engage "drive" and start driving around, all with on-board software. It lacks sensors to do anything interesting, but the basic driving controls are there.

Good thing it cannot be updated over the air.

Gratuitous CGI?

Will Smith saying "Awww, hell naw"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1UxZJ9owXY

Of course a competent writer would've thrown in a line about how these cars are on run flats at some point...

Our only hope is for the scientists in the So-Secret-President-Doesnt-Even-Know Facility to come up with something so crazy it just might work

As to movie points: of course Will Smith is the hero, and we'll handle DC rush hour stasis through special effects. ;-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_(1994_film)

https://medium.com/@mpesce/the-great-hack-part-one-attack-70...

In some cases, people are having to wait months to get new airbags because they just don't have them in stock. In the computer case, would you want to keep driving until they can get you scheduled for a software update? Remember that many cars can't update critical software OTA.

>In some cases, people are having to wait months to get new airbags because they just don't have them in stock. In the computer case, would you want to keep driving until they can get you scheduled for a software update? Remember that many cars can't update critical software OTA.*

So I assume you don't own a car and you avoid them at all costs? Otherwise your paranoia becomes hypocrisy. If you cannot trust the car company to deliver software updates, you can't trust them to write the software in the first place, and modern cars are full of safety-critical software.

I also don't know why you're equating the a manufacturing capacity limitation with a software update limitation. It's not as if Toyota is going to have trouble shipping bits a million times vs a thousand times once the software update is written.

I think we can also safely assume that self-driving cars will generally be updatable OTA. But yes, you could drive it to the dealer if needed, and worst case the dealer could send people on-site to do the update.

I say allegedly, because my local Honda dealership told me to pound sand when I asked for a rental car for the day they needed to repair my CRV.

Also, if during normal routine you run through all four electric windows to close them (so passenger, driver, passenger rear, driver rear) in that order, you hear the solenoids click in a COMPLETELY different order. I am not sure if it is prioritising the messages in some way but the order that the windows "click" is not the order I press the buttons.

Also, I can get the CD player to crash.

Such minor noticeable issues make me think about the quality of the more important bits somewhat.

The breakdown on Toyota's safety code was interesting; and frightening really.

Auto mfgs seem to be about 20-30 years behind when it comes to computers. Not really surprising that Tesla is whomping them on this front, given how SV people are scrambling to work there. You don't see that with the Big 3 or really any other car mfg.

probability x value, etc.

There are a few instances where some bad tesla batteries (the standard 12 volt batteries ironically) failed, and the cars handled it perfectly. It slowed down so that the driver could do safely pull over. Sure it did not happen to all cars at once, and autonomous cars migh not be able to do that by themselves but we have a log way to go to reach 100% autonomous driving (i.e. Without a steering wheel and a car that drives everywhere humans drive and not only on San Francisco's perfect sunny roads where it's been thoroughly tested on).

I'm also a biker. In 2013, 4,735 pedestrians and 743 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles. http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm

In the future when self-driving or at least augmented driving is commonplace, I hope that number will be a lot lower.

At least with human drivers, the failures are generally uncorrelated.

Most people have a greater fear of flying than driving by car although statistically you're far more at risk in a car. One cause of that fear of flying is loss of control; you have to accept placing your life in someone else's hands.

With self driving cars suspect lack of control will also be a problem. Either we need to provide passengers with some vestige of control to keep them busy or we just wait a generation until people get used to it

Really? That sounds counter intuitive. You'd think the reason people are afraid of flying is, because, you know, it's flying. Thirty thousand feet between you and the cold, hard ground. That's a long fall of agony to utmost certain death, and some magic turbo voodoo keeping you from it.

Would people with fear of flying really rather be the pilot?

Give ambulatory meat some onboard decision-making ability, and it will want to use it.

But, since flying in the cockpit isn't available, then what? Get a copy of "SOAR: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying" (Amazon editors' 2014 favorite book).

I'm very curious to see if our understanding (as a society) of our own technology will improve over time or if people will continue to blame the internet for "not working" 20 years from now.

A stroke or heart attack while driving?

A "Perfect Storm" of bugs could cause a systemic failure that has the possibility to affect all cars everywhere (well, probably limited to a single car-maker / model / etc). This has the possibility to affect millions. Claiming that a stroke or heart attack while driving has the possibility of a similar scope / reach doesn't make sense.

So in that respect, the introduction of self-driving-cars won't necessarily make such events more likely.

We see this ALL the time with ALL the big companies including the ones I have worked for in the past. I am very interested in possible solutions people are cooking up here.

When an accident is inevitable, software will decide if prived or public property should be prioritized, which action is more likely to to protect driver/passenger A in detriment of driver/passenger B, etc.

Most people wouldn't blame the outcome of a split second decision made in heat of the moment but would take issue when the action is deliberate.

Interesting times we live in

All pipe dreams of mine, but the research potential here could be worth flaming truckloads of grant money :-)

It's not quite possible to write a car that avoids ALL accidents because a car has a speed and a turning radius and breaks only work so fast.

Top Gear discussed speed limits being set based on worst-case breaking distances. Here's an analysis of that: http://www.jmp.co.uk/forward-thinking/update/top-gear-and-sp... but TL;DR performance vehicles can be safer since they're more capable.

Think what an F1 or rally car could do with computers driving it and avoiding accidents.

It's not possible to have a self-driving car avoid all accidents, but one can presumably get pretty close. The realtime data from sensors give you enough information about the car itself, its surroundings and other objects around it to continuously compute a safety envelope - a subspace of the phase space of controllable parameters (like input, steering) within which the car can stop safely - and then make one of the goals to aggressively steer the car to remain in that envelope. This approach should be able to automagically handle things like safe driving distances or pedestrians suddenly running into the street.

Of course there will be a lot of details to account for when implementing this software, but it's important to realize that we have enough computing power to let the car continuously have every possible backup plan for almost any contingency in its electronic brain.

But how is Google or any other manufacturer going to test their software updates? Are they going to test-drive their cars for tens of thousands of miles over and over again for every little update?

Here's Google talking about it: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...

Of course this is only one component to feeling confident about pushing out an update where lives are on the line, but it's a key component.

For example if the new update makes the car more aggressive, then other real drivers might be more careful, slow down more, etc compared to the original runs?

And that once a comfortable self-driving experience is found, Google will not want to change it much.

I'm sorry but the important point is: how are we going to agree what needs more testing, and what can be updated without testing? If we let those big companies decide about those issues, then I'm afraid we will soon see another scandal like VW, except possibly with deadly consequences.

I can already predict the reasoning of those companies: last quarter our cars were safer than average, so we can afford some failures now.

I thought programmers were on here :-)

I hardly think the argument will be difficult to just prohibit cars.

Sure... so you're saying that your steering wheel blocks when you're trying to make an uncharted turn? Or that your throttle has a variable hard limit, depending on the road you're on?

Where do you live, if I may ask?

In other words, I agree that it's better for society, but that "better for society" isn't the metric that gets used for making decisions within the system.

A significant consideration is whether owners of self driving cars will have the right to make code modifications to their vehicles.

Captured aptly here by Cory Doctrow.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/23/the-probl...

Edit: salient quotes from the article:

"Here’s a different way of thinking about [the trolley] problem: if you wanted to design a car that intentionally murdered its driver under certain circumstances, how would you make sure that the driver never altered its programming so that they could be assured that their property would never intentionally murder them?"

"If self-driving cars can only be safe if we are sure no one can reconfigure them without manufacturer approval, then they will never be safe."

"Your relationship to the car you ride in, but do not own, makes all the problems mentioned even harder."

This gives me weird visions of Google engineers with a necklace that explodes in the event that one of their cars causes an accident :S

Unremovable, remote controllable lethal necklaces are a central plot device in the mercenary invasion. They are put on randomly chosen civilians as "collateral" to ensure co-operation and disincentive insurgency.