[rycfan]

"The public has been made aware that programmers can be culprits. This will make it more likely that the next time something goes wrong -- a plane crash, a fire, a flood -- that the public will jump to the conclusion that some programmer caused it. Yes, this is a stretch; but it wasn't so long ago that the concept of programmer implication in disasters was non-existent."

"...it wasn't so long ago..." What?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 -- This has been a thing since at least 1985 and probably far longer.

[iofj]

Exactly. There is an existing legal and moral framework for precisely these sorts of situations. It seems to work very well for the emissions scandal too, so why mess with it.

Even if the programmer was fully aware of what they were doing, VW would still be the only party that's legally and morally responsible for this.

(And may God help whoever made the Therac-25 mistake, just imagine making a bug like that)