If you increase the danger of a situation to increase it's exposure, you can't be surprised when that causes repercussions. I doubt they will go to jail, but I do think alerting the authorities was the right call.

In fact, they may have been counting on that. If they really want to increase the exposure of a story, start a public debate. The easiest way to do that? Get some public outrage going. They called this all out, they'll need to deal with the consequences.

I don't disagree with you on that. The researchers (and WiReD) should certainly be aware of the risks here, and be prepared to accept the repercussions thereof.

On the other hand, while two wrongs don't make a right, I'm glad that the researchers made that choice, so long as said choice results in manufacturers actually taking car security seriously for once.

Did they publicize it on Wired like they did with this post?

I'm reasonably sure that if they had tested in a private track and made a public article it would have the same effect as what they did in their post.

In essence, the publicity factor is the most important, not where they tested it.

Different hackers, over a year ago, in a semi-controlled environment, on Vice. Didn't have much of an effect.

http://www.vice.com/video/how-to-hack-a-car

I didn't watch the full video, but at 6:45 it states

"Unlike most previously recorded car hacks, this demonstration was performed wirelessly over cellular networks. The vehicle shown is modified with third-party hardware for demo purposes. In stock form it is not vulnerable to these attacks"

which is quite different from the level of vulnerability showcased in the Wired article.