A security hole like this is extremely dangerous due to the magnitude of its ignorance. Systems like mass transit should HAVE good engineers that spend time evaluating security risks and testing systems for robustness et cetera.
I doubt the hole would have been patched if someone called up their local Mass Transit Authority and said "Hey, uh, I've got this 0-day..." A 14 year old boy exploiting it, on the other hand, is probably going to draw some attention to it, and that attention will likely get the hole fixed, potentially saving hundreds of lives in the future.
If GM built a car that killed its inhabitants when a radio station played a certain song, GM would be to blame, not the radio station.