1. The global reach of networked telecommunications permits a small quantity of sociopathic murderers to operate from beyond jurisdictions that can reach them, and also assists in destroying evidence of their interference.
2. Computational power enables force multiplication, such that even just one sociopathic murderer could exploit software flaws across millions of vehicles, simultaneously.
3. Some software exploits will work against self driving cars, which could never work against an ordinary person, and of course, vice versa, but not so much via remote control at a distance, when people are the operators, while we still lack electronic interfaces to our central nervous system.
We were discussing "tricking" the computer vision component of a self-driving car, not getting software access. That's still a concern, but it's an entirely different set of security requirements that we already face in planes and existing cars.
>painting fake lines on the road, or dropping a cutout of a pedestrian onto a highway
sounds like
>"tricking" the computer vision component of a self-driving car, not getting software access.