Re:U.S. to ground Boeing 737 Max 8
by arcticbull on Wednesday March 13, 2019 @08:19PM
(#19385334)
Well nobody is proposing a free pass here. Of course they'll all need to be fixed, and ASAP. I'm just saying, it's no more a death trap than your average Honda Civic so it's probably okay to let them stay up in the air, depending on what the confounding external factors end up being.
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Cars kill people primarily due to human error in judgment or lack of attention. Mechanical or software failures causing fatalities are the overwhelming minority of cases.
Remember how big of a deal the Toyota accelerator pedal recall was?
Didn't Toyota turn out to be a few old people that probably shouldn't haven't been driving anymore anyways.
No, it was a buffer overflow in the ECU. It's an interesting read if that's the kind of thing that strikes your fancy :)
This could be as bad as the Toyota "unintended acceleration" glitch.
The way this particular glitch plays out sounds suspiciously like software, or a software-like function of the MCAS unit.
There was never any evidence that a software glitch caused sudden unintended acceleration in Toyotas. The problems were caused by defective floor mats and driver error.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15125313/its-all-your...
The specific causes were determined to be non-software, but when they took a close look at the software, the software was atrociously bad.
I'm not sure Boeing's software, even if not at fault, will be entirely flawless.