on the other hand, if you know your old software is buggy and could cause fatal accident, you release a software update, but for some unknown reasons, the user keeps denying updating software, what would you do ?
As for cost, surely you can ask Ford's lawyers who worked there in the 70s to give you a good calculation on life vs recall costs.
That is why Samsung push update to disable note 7 even after recalling them.
In Germany we let the Kraftfahrtbundesamt handle this. You are required by law to keep your address updated with the authorities, and all vehicles have to be registered to get a license plate. When a recall for safety reasons happens, the Kraftfahrtbundesamt writes a notification letter, and if you do not respond in time with evidence of having the recall issue remediated by a qualified shop (or doing it yourself and getting a sign-off from a licensed inspector), eventually they write to your local DMV office that can ban your vehicle from the roads, and if you miss that the police shows up at your home and physically removes the license sticker from the table.
And heaven forbid you get actually caught driving the car after having gotten the notification letter from your local DMV. That's automatically felony territory. Our authorities really, really do not mess around.
[1] https://www.kba.de/DE/Themen/Marktueberwachung/Rueckrufe/rue...
No. You test it. And release it if and when it is fully tested. (you know, V-cycle). But we are Agile now and testing is expensive.
Let’s not let perfection obstruct progress.
Yup, my test is not perfect, but "Let’s not let perfection obstruct progress".
In all scenarios, tricky bugs will happen. Something inconceivable will go untested. But that’s not what happened here. This is basically functionality being lost that very obviously should have been tested.
In that sense, they could have made progress. Nobody is expecting perfection. You seem to be hung up on the distinction