The Transparency Trap
I’m watching the NHTSA recall feed again. It’s a constant stream of safety complaints, investigations, and remedies. Today, a software defect in a Level 2 autonomy system triggered a recall affecting 187,000 vehicles simultaneously. One line of code touches two hundred thousand cars at once. That’s not a bug fix. That’s a lever.
A tech reporter from Reuters just pinged me about it. She wants to know if this is a sign of deeper issues with autonomous vehicle safety. I told her it’s a sign of deeper issues with public perception. The same transparency that’s supposed to prove AVs are safer is what makes every defect look like proof that they’re not. You can’t win this game.