https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-09-1...
https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles/ford-issues-recall-...
As I understand it large trucks existed prior to power-assist, they just hired big strong chaps who could wrestle the steering.
We probably don't want (and Boeing doesn't want) to make 737 Max certification have a "Physical strength check" where you need to exert so-and-so much turning force for so-and-so many seconds or you can't fly their plane. So probably trim wheels need a re-think, whether that happens as part of the 737 Max work, its immediate aftermath or not for years because this incident scares manufacturers away from changing anything about trim.
Seismic shifts in safety considerations do happen, we haven't seen the last of them. And they aren't always ultimately for the better. Titanic had a few effects, many of them really good, but one notable one is that it pushed the narrative that you need to provide and test a LOT of lifeboats on an ocean liner. Titanic, as you can probably all recite, did not have enough lifeboats. But in practice lifeboats are very much a last resort for an ocean liner captain. You've got a whole lot of civilians who are incompetent at sea at the best of times, probably panicking and now you're trying to successfully get them into smaller boats under supervision of a relatively smaller number of crew. Some of them are likely to be injured or even die. A ship's master would prefer _anything_ over putting passengers into lifeboats, except them all drowning. Almost always the sensible course of action, taken by the ship's master, will be to take the still working ship to any port and unload the passengers. Yes even if the ship is somewhat on fire, or has grave engine problems, almost anything except actually sinking right now.
Meanwhile just owning the lifeboats means your crew have to keep testing them and servicing them, each time also has a chance of injury or death as crew fall into the water, boats fall on the crew, and so on. So owning a suite of lifeboats for your ocean liner (which you weren't planning to crash into an iceberg at any time) is probably a net negative in terms of injuries and deaths.
Actually, I think they absolutely should. And then it should be made illegal to have a plane that has any such requirements, so these planes should be deemed unairworthy, and Boeing should be forced to scrap them. Either that, or female pilots should be able to claim discrimination, and every female or otherwise not-strong-enough pilot should get a free lifelong chief pilot salary as part of the settlement.
Basically, this plane should never have been built. It's a 1960s design, and because of crappy regulations that allowed this, Boeing kept making this 1960s tech because it was "grandfathered". Newly-built planes should not be allowed just because they were OK 50 years ago, when they aren't good enough according to modern standards.
Many modern cars have computer control of brakes, accelerator and even steering, so a software flaw could stop you in the opposing lane just as you start to pass a car, or accelerate and steer you into a bridge pillar (and since that car was already steering the car before that, the driver may not be able to react in time)
Steer by wire is becoming much more common. It’s already in luxury cars and, like most features, will probably eventually trickle into economy car designs
I did see one source indicating a roughly 25% increase in steer by wire by 2026, but it’s behind a paywall so I’m not sure how good that source is. According to a Tesla forum, there’s still a mandate for mechanical linkage
EPS has been on production cars now since the 1990s, and I've never heard of any software problems with those at all. In fact, it's probably been more reliable than hydraulic systems since it doesn't have so many moving parts, just an electric motor, and no hydraulic fluid to leak or get contaminated (due to not being replaced on time, a common thing for people to skip on maintenance).
Steer-by-wire is a no-go for now, because it's illegal to not have a mechanical linkage. That might eventually change when we get driverless cars, but there's no sign that those are coming nearly as quickly as many people used to think; there's just too many problems with them.
“Recalled products do not contain the updated software that mitigates the effect of the condition. When the system voltage drops below 8.8 volts for more than 1 second — e.g., during low-speed turns — EPS assist is disabled”
Honda has had similar recalls.
I don’t know if that can be used to claim software caused the initial hazard but does indicate software is used to mitigate safety issues with the implication that software failures can lead directly to hazards
This isn't very different from old hydraulic-assist cars that also had the assist die or be too low when there was some problem (fluid too low, pump failure, belt failure, etc.). Was it ever a big problem? No, not really. If your power steering fails in a parking lot, it's a pain, but you're already barely moving, so you just stop. At worst, you might have a minor fender-bender.
I don't see how this is a software problem; this is an electrical problem. The only software issue here is the decision to shut down the EPS instead of bringing it back online when the system voltage goes high enough.
Personally, I'd say the fundamental problem here is actually the fact that cars still have 12V electrical systems, and batteries that are really meant for starting only, not for continuously supplying heavy electrical loads (like EPS). Carmakers should have gone to 42V or 48V systems ages ago.
I don’t know the specifics of the system safety analysis but if the software is used to mitigate a hazard, it’s usually considered safety critical. In this case, if it shuts the EPS off, or fails to bring it back online, it it would significantly affect the vehicle handling dynamics. Again, I don’t know their classification scheme but I would assume the steering is a safety critical system. Some reports claim the vehicle lost all handling control, but I’m a little skeptical of that claim.
In any event, I wouldn’t consider it no issue. Recalls cost a lot of money. In the GM case it affected 1MM cars. I didn’t look up the cost of each fix, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it cost nine figures. I doubt they would go forward with a recall of that magnitude for a trivial issue.
I could see the same rationalization for MCAS. The system safety analysis didn’t claim an MCAS failure was catastrophic and they already had a procedural mitigation in place if it did fail. It wouldn’t take much to convince someone that such a recall fix was no big deal. This is part of the problem with systems using safety critical software
I'm not familiar with the specifics of that case, but having a low system voltage is more likely at parking lot speeds because the alternator isn't turning very fast, whereas at speed the alternator should be generating enough power to run everything including EPS, but maybe they underspecced the alternator, so I can see it happening. Still, losing your power assist at speed is still dangerous of course, but it is recoverable, and it's nothing like having a critical system fail in an aircraft. Failures in cars are always safer than in aircraft, because you're already on the ground. This is why safe design is so important in aircraft: if something goes wrong in a car, it might result in a wreck of a few vehicles at worst (multiplied by the number of cars experiencing that failure), but many times tragedy is avoided because the driver just needs to steer away from traffic and avoid running into something too fast. In an aircraft, there's no such thing as a "fender bender"; crashes are usually fatal, and they usually carry dozens to hundreds of passengers.
>Recalls cost a lot of money. In the GM case it affected 1MM cars. I didn’t look up the cost of each fix, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it cost nine figures.
That seems high: you're assuming each car cost $1000 to fix there. That's a lot of money to fix one component; at that volume, the part probably cost well under $100 each, and as another poster noted, the dealer labor required was pretty small.
I was estimating at $100 per fix (since it's just the labor cost of software). At roughly $120 per labor hour multiplied by 1MM vehicles is where I came up with the nine figure mark. At $1k per fix, it would be in the 10 digits. Regardless, it was overshot and I corrected it with the details in a reply (since I couldn't edit the original). It only comes in at 0.5 hours per fix. Not chump change but the decision to fix it may also have been influenced by the Toyota accelerator and GM ignition recalls that got a lot of press.
And, as you pointed out, it was a systems interaction problem. Losing power steering at speed isn't great, but it's recoverable (maybe less so if you're weak and you're driving some big stupid SUV, rather than a small economy car), and losing power brakes is also bad but recoverable because you have enough vacuum in the system to do a full stop (but only 1 usually), but tie them together, at speed, and also (worst of all) lock the steering wheel, and you have a recipe for disaster. This is far, far, far worse than losing your power steering assist at parking-lot speeds.
This is the traditional way to deal with system hazards. What has been talked about is the need for changing the way we think about software failures on safety critical systems, distinct from traditional failure mode approaches.
"The result is that software-related accidents involve a new type of accident, which can be called a component interaction accident: None of the components fail (all satisfy their specified requirements) but the problems arise from dysfunctional interactions among the components."[2]
>how about cars that have sudden loss of steering
Citation needed. I've never heard of a car having this problem, and it's generally impossible because there's a mechanical link between the steering wheel and the front wheels.
>or a throttle that can't be disengaged?
Citation needed. I've never heard of this happening where it's been proven to be real and not a publicity stunt. All the problems with "unintended acceleration", including on Toyotas a while back, have been shown to either be people using aftermarket carpet mats, or even people faking it. What's more, turning off the car in an emergency is not hard, even in push-button-start cars. Now of course, we can blame some wrecks from faulty systems on poor driver training, drivers who just aren't very good, drivers who can't handle an emergency, etc. This simply does not apply in an airplane: pilots go through a LOT of training to get that job, so if they crash anyway, that points to an unforgivable mistake in engineering or manufacturing.