Is it just me?

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Or does the idea of automatic cars aka " smart cars " terrified anyone? Just the thought of not being the one driving a car, and with technology becoming more and more integrated with the newest models. The thought of some complete stranger with the know how, could hack into the cars' engine, brakes, etc... virtually disabling the car entirely, and not being able to do anything about it. I know some people who are excited about what the future could hold for us, but I can't help but feel terrified.

It is not just cars, but technology in general and our ever increasing reliance on technology. What if a solar flare from the sun hit the Earth, or the satellites orbiting it? it could cause the satellites to become damaged leading to a power outage. Which could lead to some serious "potential " problems I ask this as a hypothetical question because we have not gotten that far, but it still bothers me.

I agree completely. While some drivers of motor vehicles are downright scary, they also have a degree of the human-survival instinct that forces most of us to brake, slow down and steer away from collisions thereby minimizing the damage done to all parties involved. I can't say that about self-driving compterized motor vehicles which would probably maintain its 45 MPH drive through a farmers' market simply because Google Maps doesn't know that the street is sometimes NOT a street when the market is open to pedestrians.

Not frightening, but as with smart cars, there must always be a way to override the 'autopilot' at any time, in the similar after of what planes do.

Though satilites don't control electricity, a solar flare powerful enough could I think knock out a satilite completely. Depends what the satilite does, could mean the loss of satilite TV as an example. A flare could also affect power grids but as for now, I think it is a minor issue for less powerful flares. Matamaticaly... There's no way we would see a flare capable of boiling away the atmosphere.

I see technology is our way of adapting to our increasingly complex and rather intellectual environment , influenced by money, the desire to rule and control and lay the law onto civilization.

I didn't say anything about a solar flare boiling our atmosphere not entirely sure where you go that from, but what I did mean was a powerful enough solar flare that could affect our power grids. Which could potentially affect us as a civilization that is one thing that concerns me a bit.
An example of what I mean is my nephew who uses the computer for everything nowadays, and when a storm knocked out our power. he was shuffling around the house for a good three- four hours, because he had nothing to do.

I'm all for replacing the nut behind the wheel with a chip.

I'm indifferent about it. In the end, a car is something that gets you from point a to point b.

but a comfortable ride is better than an uncomfortable ride.

I wouldn't get comfortable with a chip-controlled car, it can always malfunction.

What could psosblu go wprong?

Exactly.

I can't wait to find out how it all turns out.

It doesn't need perfect safety, it just needs to be safer than a human driver.

According to a Wikipedia.org article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger ... ted_States which refers to the total number of passenger vehicles in the United States, "[o]verall, there were an estimated 254.4 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2007 DOT study." According to a Census.gov rreport http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/ ... 2s1103.pdf the total number of motor-vehicle accidents in 2007 was 10.6 million accidents.

Simple math tells us that just 4.2 percent of the motor-vehicle driving public in the United States experienced an acciddent that year. I suspect that the total number of computer glitches, blue-screens, web-site hacks and assorted other mistakes in the Internet infrastructure exceeds 4.2 percent of the installed computer/server base in the United States.

That's because most computer systems are not life critical and not engineered as such.

I assume self-driving cars wouldn't just be connected to Google Maps, but also contain sensors that stop if someone is ahead, as well as failsafe mechanisms that brake if the main computer crashes. Many systems like that are in operation.

This threshold has already been passed. Basically any car manufactured after ~2007 in the US can be completely hacked and controlled by remote without extensive modification.

Chances are good that your car already has most of the following:

Power (aka computer controlled or computer controllable) steering ("hey look, my car can parallel park itself!")
Anti-lock brakes (controlled by computer)
Fuel Injection w/ computer controlled throttle
Power door locks, windows, and ignition (remote start, and remote stop).

You'll need to gain access to the car first. If you're thinking of CAN bus hacking, then this enables you to controll stuff like the radio, whether or not the servo works, and so on. It still won't allow you to remotely control the car directly without any modifications. Problems may arise if you have physical access, though, since you can bypass the immobilizer if you know what you're doing.



This is mandatory on all new cars, and it's been like that in premium cars since the 70s and 80s (abeit not OBD-II or EOBD).