Calling the police was completely inappropriate, but downvoting the comment as a way to signal your disapproval with his action in the real world isn't helpful. The comment itself is well written, on topic, and leading to good discussion.
I agree with what others have already said: Since nobody was actually hurt he should have contacted the researchers to make his point.
Right, yesterday my neighbor shot a gun at me several times but since he missed and no one was hurt, it would have been utterly inappropriate for me to contact the authorities.
One problem with this reasoning is that the researchers really didn't know what they were doing with 100% certainty. Their code could have accidentally affected the stability control subsystem that most cars have nowadays -- the one that's designed to apply full braking to a single wheel to recover from a skid. In fact, just corrupting the data from the steering-wheel angle sensor could have had that effect (which I personally find rather terrifying in itself.) Good job, guys, now you've caused a 70 MPH rollover in traffic.
The right way to do this would have been for the researchers to call the police up front and arrange a demonstration on a closed road with police escort. That would have lent the video more credibility and shielded the researchers from liability, while addressing any concerns about safety or ethics.
Firing a gun at someone is dangerous. A car slowing down and/or with reduced visibility on a busy highway is dangerous. Then either of these situations happen by accident, we understand that there's not a lot to do about them because there was no intentional behavior that needs correction. When they are purposefully done, that's endangering people, and is unacceptable behavior that needs correcting. In this respect, they are no different.
It is a never ending discussion around here but my take away is that votes express opinion as well as quality of the posting.
We are here not an intellectual debate club were people take pro and contra sides and points are distributed based on the rigor of the argument, but discussions around here are about real world problems.
And somebody calling the cops on security researchers just because he read an article on the intern is in my view highly questionable behavior for somebody familiar with the tech community.
