I agree, I don't necessarily want them to go to jail, but I would be happy if they were suitably scared shitless for a while as the enormity of how bad they fucked up (if the facts are as they seem) hits them. Part of the benefit of the extreme reactions from the people here is that future security researchers working on interactions between software and hardware appliances that may pose a physical threat will have an example of exactly why you should show your proof in a controlled environment.

It's actually not that different than pure software security research. You don't show a POC for your new DNS exploit by doing it against Comcast or AT&T public DNS servers without expecting some blowback. You set up a test environment.