Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I entirely agree with that.

Cars are already extremely risky to modify, but it is still possible (and it's even a protected consumer right). I can go out and accidentally cut the breaks on my own car while changing the tire, if it causes harm, we already have a system in place to deal with it.

Why should software be any different?

View on HN

I would argue that cars are not extremely risky to modify mechanically - the parts are usually large, almost everything you'd want to do on your car has youtube videos and forum threads with people doing the exact same procedure, and you have pretty immediate feedback if you really messed anything up/the car is inoperable.

I don't think that is the same for self-driving software if you were allowed to hack it. It is easy to test if your brakes work, I think it may be harder to test modified software with the huge number of interactions it must deal with.

It's not a your business unless you will be hit by such car.

Oh baloney. Have you any experience with current car tech? It's pretty freaking basic, all things considered. Anyone who codes enterprise applications for a living can deal with a car's ECU, including ABS, traction control, all of it. The autonomous stuff is "scary AI" but if it's not open sourced, I don't want it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com