You speak of the olden times like they're long gone? My car is from 2001, has side curtain airbags which will render most common crashes non-fatal, and it still has a fully mechanical throttle and no electronic brake controller of any kind. I don't consider it all that old.

Yes it has an ECU, but EFI is not the problem in my opinion, and the computer by itself doesn't frighten me. EFI was a fantastic invention as far as I'm concerned. Also despite it being a "black box" I find it much more pleasurable to tune and maintain EFI systems over fickle carburetors.

The real problem was making the ECU an _active control system_ which directly controls the engine, throttle, brakes, etc. in response to your inputs; as opposed to a passive one which merely _reacts in response to changes in its environment_ (e.g: more air moving through the intake, wheels locked up, losing traction on one side.)

So yes, my '01 Toyota has a black box, but it's simple enough that it could be replaced by a handful of aftermarket controllers, many of which have their source freely available, or available for a modest licensing fee.

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Also I'd like to disagree that reacting to WOT is a "complex decision matrix." -- My instinctual reaction would be as follows.

First you open the clutch and/or put the car in neutral. Disconnecting the motor from the wheels is the most reasonable solution to this problem. When I was taught to drive stick the very first thing I was told, before I ever moved the car an inch, was: "when you need to stop, clutch and brake."

(Of course if it's an automatic transmission: "going into neutral" is just controlled by another black box. Sucks to be you if you hit deadly bugs in two separate powertrain management controllers.)

(As an aside I do personally know people that commute every day in the US, and they don't even know what a transmission does. Why are we licensing these people as skilled motorists?)

If I somehow found myself without even the most basic control of my transmission then you just press the brakes as hard as you can and you stop in ~300 feet.[1]

If that didn't work, or if I had stopped but hadn't regained control of the vehicle, I would then kill the ignition. (To be fair: I'm told this is not quite so simple in modern cars! Apparently someone thought "pushing and holding a button for 3 seconds" was a better idea than "turn a key." -- However I also wouldn't agree to drive a car if I didn't know something as basic as how to kill the ignition under duress. I'm the sort of guy that reads the manual cover to cover for fun.)

If killing the ignition doesn't work[2] and your transmission is somehow stuck engaged then today is really not your day.

I don't see how any of this requires any more skill than driving does normally. To me this is not some complex decision tree, it's reflex at this point.

(Also there is a good reason I would brake before killing the ignition. Brakes and steering are mechanically assisted by the engine. It would be extremely irresponsible to cut the ignition in a vehicle w/ power steering and power brakes on a public motorway in my opinion. -- Again I don't think this is some complex decision, I believe it should be requisite knowledge for being licensed to operate a motor vehicle under such conditions.)

tl;dr: the complexity in this matrix is inherent in the task itself. If this is "too complex" then maybe we should work to improve our driver training and licensing programs; or better yet consider having more people take public transit, instead of handing out licenses like candy.

[1]: http://media.caranddriver.com/images/media/51/braking-result...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NRaqgab0_w