My main point here is that it isn't true that the car couldn't be turned off, and this was some sort of design defect or electronics failure. The driver just didn't know how to turn the car off.
Cars still killed the ignition directly until very recently. I think that some still do. You will never know if holding down the button on those Toyota’s would have killed the ignition or not. You do not know the state of the computer at that time regardless of what this report says. But in any case it takes to long to implement. You can still have all the electronic toys. But the law should say that the ignition should have an instantaneous method of direct killing the ignition.
Now you take a modern industrial machine like a VMC. Those machines are computerized to the max. But then there is that little red button that says “E-STOP”. That means emergency stop. What does that button do. Yes it tells the control to stop the machine, but it does something else. I worked with those machines for some time so I know. In that case the E-Stop button kills the +24 volt power supply to the entire machine. Without that everything stops no matter what the control tries to do. The machine is wired and designed so that it can’t run without it. Someones life may depend on it. It is no different with an automobile. It is required in industry(or used to be) and should likewise be required for an automobile. Explain it away if you like, but it is the way it should be. And for good reason.
Sometimes technology does not move us forward. Sometimes it makes us arrogant and far too dependent on the idea that nothing will go wrong. But sooner or later something will go wrong. Sometimes you need to allow the human brain to take control. You need to leave the human brain with some options to take control in an emergency.