Interesting story. I've been licensed to do radio (First Phone, now General Class) and I've been licensed to do flight (Private Pilot).
No one ever got killed because an automation machine played the wrong tune, wrong promo, or went silent until human hands could rush to the studio and offer a little adult supervision to the machine.
At the end of the story which you linked, one paragraph kind of summed it up. The first time one of those pilotless aircraft plows into a home or a daycare center or a city park and someone's precious baby is killed... or crippled for life.... and the mother goes on TV with her story and her tears, the whole movement for pilotless aircraft will learn everything there is to know about knee-jerk government legislative actions.
All if this brings to mind the comedian's monologue from years ago about "world's first automated passenger flight". I assume all of you have heard it. It's the one that ends with the intercom voice coming out of the overhead speaker: "And after thousans of hours of testing, we can assure you that nothing about this flight can possibly go wrong <click>, go wrong<click>, go wrong<click>, go wrong.........."
So I bought a new car. My old car was ten years old. You can imagine how many things have changed, how many computerized functions I am having to get used to. So a week ago yesterday I am sitting in the blazing mid 90's temperatures of a small Arkansas town, explaining to the automobile company's 800 number how one of the computerized features of my car is disrupting my life. And their suggestion was that somehow I get me and my car to the nearest dealer, 125 miles away, and sometime tomorrow they will see if they know how to solve your problem. And I was 700 miles from home.
In the words of the movie: "Houston, We have a problem."
