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I'm going to go out on the 'conspiracy theory limb' or at least the 'clever future planning' one. I think that this uproar may be intentional, or at least advantageous to the company in the long run, and by extension, good for us enthusiasts. I think it is a way to retain the option of fully defeatable 'nannies' and limit the automation, at least for sports cars.
From the R&T article: " The day is coming very soon where every new BMW is likely to have these systems fitted as standard equipment. It won't take anything more than a few aggressive ambulance-chasing attorneys to make that happen; "Do you mean to tell the court that your company had technology that could have prevented this accident, but you didn't supply that technology because it cost extra money to do so?" Cue the multi-million-dollar judgments and the addition of crash-avoidance tech to the already-mandatory ABS and ESP."
Now left unchecked, this would indeed rapidly put 'nannies' in every car, and likely harder and harder to turn off. But if BMW was able to say 'track use is important, and w/o fully defeatable nannies we can't sell our cars' then it isn't just a case of 'we are too cheap to add safety features'. Kind of like the argument for trucks and SUV's that have lethal rollover potential, but as part of their inherent features, so not open to legislation like ABS systems are.
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