I don't disagree, but it is worth remembering that purely hardware systems aren't foolproof either. I had a fuel pump fail on my old car (would be 15+ years old if I still had it), and it took out the brakes and steering at the same time (virtually standing on the brakes to slow down at all, and I ended up running the car off the road as I couldn't physically brake or turn the wheel enough to stay on the road).

I don't know that I trust hardware more, but hardware is roughly equally involved in any case...

I meant hardware in the "old-school" sense of physical linkages and hydraulics, not computer hardware whose behaviour is controlled by some massively complex blob of software.

For example, if I pull the door handle of my car, it directly activates the latch, and the only way that could fail is if something physically breaks or jams. It's not just a switch sending a signal to some "brain" in between that could just decide, deliberately or otherwise, to not honour my "I want the door to open" request.

People are often surprised to learn that, despite me making a living off software development, my daily driver is one that has exactly zero lines of code controlling it.

I meant hardware in the same sense as you. My point was that even if we assume the brain (borrowing your metaphor) makes no mistakes, introducing it does not reduce the amount of physical breakage and jammage that is likely to occur.

You're not choosing hardware over software, here - in which case I might choose differently - you're choosing to eliminate an entire link in the chain. That's always going to be a win for reliability.

Perhaps "trustworthiness" is not the best word for the concept. I'm not sure mechanical hardware is more trustworthy (mechanical stuff also fail often and can be unreliable), but their behavior is somewhat more malleable by the user (i.e. via extra force), as opposed to complex blackbox electronics/software.

I think we need a good term to describe this specific kind of trustworthiness.

nice... what do you drive? muscle car?

cycle ?

Yep, that's what scares me about the "drive by wire" systems standard on most cars today. Oh, and to add even more excitement, the car is on fire and the doors/windows won't open.

One should always keep a tool in the car in reach to use to break the windows in case of emergency.

I am not sure mechanical hardware is less likely to fail than software. For example, ford recalled door latches for a mechanical problem - https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015... what is worse is my friend can't get the door latch replaced on her ford because "the part's on backorder."

You can smash the window by driving the pillars of the headrest down into the door to the edge of the glass. Twist down to start a crack at the weak edge and the whole tempered sheet will shatter.

https://youtu.be/tZTa8Nh0VlE?t=25