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Comment by MSFT_Edging | Hacker News Reader

It might be my conspiracy brain acting up but "multi-ton machine without manual override" sends all the red flashing lights and klaxons off in my head.

Political assassination via cyber attack/backdoor? ezpz, find a tree, accelerate into it, claim it was the car acting up.

Bug in the software? Sorry you're dying today because they wanted to repossess cars easier, your life is less important than protecting capital.

We're in a world where deregulation has planes either falling out of the sky or attempting to. I don't trust any soft handed regulation on cars without manual overrides.

My car has a push start, but also a manual transmission. I know if something goes wrong and my engine stops responding to the electric throttle I can just pop out of gear and coast.

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Manual transmissions are almost entirely extinct in new vehicles (in the US at least) and even some manuals have an interlock that can prevent you from taking it out of gear if the power-train control module decides it needs to stay in gear.

That's why I jumped to buy a new one as soon as I had the money. No interlock on the gearbox, no electric seats to break, manual parking brake, but with android auto on an OEM infotainment.

Not saying they're super common, but as someone who writes software, I don't like the increasing dependency on software implementations of certain components that are fairly simple in their mechanical form.

Which vehicle is this?

Your thoughts are likely not very far fetched, but in this case, to the best of my knowledge, IC and LEOs seem to be more worried about stopping individual 'bad guys'( quotations, because I hate this term ) from causing damage with ICE machines hence solutions like mandated remote off switch and so on.

On the political assassination front, wasn't there a story out about one such attempt or did I dream it?

There was a suspicious "political staffer dies from freak single car accident" events shortly after the first Jeep Cherokee was remotely taken control of. That's what stuck with me.

LEOs are also notoriously corrupt and difficult to keep tabs on. Imagine police harassment when they have the ability to remotely shut off your car.

You may be thinking of Michael Hastings?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist...

That's the one. Thanks.

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