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, Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:18:29
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which reminds me of the early Airbus that tragically continued to fly into the ground at Paris during a slow pass, even though the pilot tried to rev the engines and over shoot. And the BMI 737 that also flew into the ground after the pilots shut down the wrong engine because the engine vibration indicator mislead them. And finally one with a happy ending.. the Air Canada 767 the experienced a double engine failure and when the pilots opened their manual to look up the correct procedure for a double engine failure, they found there was no such section, because such a failure had not been contemplated. All fly-by-wire aircraft.
The problem with such software / firmware controlled vehicles is that they are limited to the responses programed into them, by humans. Someone contemplates a scenario, designs a response, and someone programs it. That leaves lots of opportunity for mishap. Certainly programming bugs, but more fundamentally, a real life scenario (combination of events) is missed from the computer's brain, or the response selected by the designers is not what the pilot actually needs.
However in the case of cars, there is a another major source of error. Untrained operators. Most drivers receive no instruction on vehicle handling, and certainly none on emergency procedures. So soccer mom gets into her 300hp lexus, drives, chats on the cell phone, and feels completely safe, because she is not told to do any differently.
That's not to say I blame the drivers only. I do believe there are software issues out there lurking under the hoods.
Even my beloved Saab, does "strange" things, because it has been programmed to. Like the temp sensor goes occasionally intermittent, and then the ECU turns off the AC and richens tthe mixture. Not the response I would want, but what some designer deemed appropriate. Well at least it works!
, Thu, 1 Oct 2009 12:45:35
, Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:53:20
, Thu, 1 Oct 2009 23:40:00, Fri, 2 Oct 2009 06:29:25, Fri, 2 Oct 2009 13:05:32, Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:37:37, Sun, 4 Oct 2009 14:46:11, Sun, 4 Oct 2009 16:45:55, Thu, 1 Oct 2009 19:00:47, Thu, 1 Oct 2009 16:33:09, Fri, 2 Oct 2009 13:00:04, Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:18:29, Thu, 1 Oct 2009 14:09:51
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