Driverless cars could pose a terrorist threat

Driverless cars are vulnerable to hackers who could bring cities to a standstill, steal vehicles remotely or even use them to carry out terrorist attacks, experts have warned.

A new report from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) suggests that autonomous vehicles could be on the roads in the next 15 years.

While they are likely to bring benefits, such as increased mobility for the elderly, lower insurance costs, and less congestion, there are fears that they may be targeted by cyber-terrorists.

Hugh Boyes, a cyber-security expert at the IET, said: “Sadly we’re not that good at writing software today. Some 98 per cent of applications have series defects.

“If we have the hacker community start to target vehicles in central London we could imagine a fair amount of chaos on the roads. Terrorism is a real risk. So cyber-security of autonomous vehicles will be critical. And we’re going to have to consider having ‘black boxes’ in vehicles in the event of an incident.”

Cars are increasingly becoming more automated with many models now including cruise control, parking assistance and distance monitoring. The average vehicle already contains about 60 microprocessors and more than 10?million lines of software code.

But transport experts at the IET predict a future where people will travel in driverless pods and only take control of the vehicle if something goes wrong. They claim for every 10,000 errors made by drivers, just one error will be made by a computer. So the new technology could save hundreds of lives a year.

Within 15 years they predict that the performance of cars could be altered to fit the driver. A learner who has recently passed their test may have their speed limited automatically.

Automated cars could also travel in platoons which would be linked up to traffic light systems to keep them moving and avoid congestion.

Three British cities are due to run driverless car trials from next year.

The Daily Telegraph

20–11–2014