No, but both the law and morality are allowed to utilize thresholds for determining acceptable risks; we weigh the risk of someone hurting themselves or others against the benefit of allowing people the ability to modify the hardware. Obviously we will all have different opinions about the relative value of risk vs freedom, but we should be able to settle on some median for how we value each. No matter what, it isn't the case that aggreeing with the idea that some machines are so dangerous we should prevent modification of the software forces us to agree that we are right to prevent modification of software on machines that have any danger at all.
Shouldn't that liability come with owning the device? I don't understand how we've come to think, as a legal system, that the maker of a tool is responsible for the behavior of modifications made to their tool. Maybe that's not even true, but it seems to be believed so. If it is, I find it preposterous. Perhaps there's some money to follow.
Washing machines can malfunction and cause fires, hypothetically. Just because one device is designed in a way that is particularly dangerous doesn't mean the same reasoning can't be applied to another device that is dangerous to a lesser degree.
Very much this! I have a large agricultural tractor that has a transmission controlled by software. While it works great most of the time, there is a bug where it will occasionally not disengage the clutch for about a minute when this condition occurs. One time, due to the tractor showing no signs of going anywhere, I accidentally left the tractor in gear and left the cab. Everything seemed fine until about a minute later when it finally kicked into gear and started moving with me standing beside it.
Fortunately, I happened to be in a low gear and was just creeping along when it started moving. I was able to get back in it and get it stopped. If it had been going faster, who knows how bad the outcome could have been. This is something I would be fixing if I had access to the code.
hmm, sounds suspicious, in that the seat sensor was disabled? Even our vehicles won't move, when in gear if no one is in the seat. Seat senors cut the drive train. Even my 15 year old el-cheap-o Sears garden tractor does the same thing: cuts the engine off if I stand up out of the seat while in gear.