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Comment by Rohanarun | Hacker News Reader

Would appreciate any feedback on how to improve the simulation for testing. For now turning off traffic lights makes the efficiency go up by 10 cars/minute. It would be interesting to test real city models, and different traffic algorithms

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I don't understand how this is hacking-resistant; if the car is relying on external information, then any flaw in its authentication of the external information can be exploited, regardless of any changes deployed by the city.

If a car starts moving independent of a city's models, it would easy to identify as a possible hack in real time. If a car gets hacked independently, there may not be much evidence of how it happened. The idea is a city based system can send help faster. A completely independent system can be hacked in multiple different ways to trick the controls, such as through the model, but a city based system would also have minimal interfaces in the actual car.

That makes sense, but I wonder if the city could respond in time to prevent casualties, given the close proximity of autos and pedestrians in most cities.

I agree any real car hack will likely not end well. This solution also introduces the possibility of a new vector for state sponsored attacks, which should be concerning to some.

The utilitarian decision is still to upgrade everyone, because the people who would hack cars to kill would likely do it another way. This may become the new improved way to "cut brakes." A state mandated system could upgrade hacking charges to serious felonies, which deters most except state-sponsored and psychopaths. I have a feeling that real car hacks will be as rare as poison Halloween candy

Also in a situation where someone is hacked, having a dense recorded model of all the roads in a city would be very handy for investigation, since the hacker would likely have to be near the car.

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