Re:Software is eating the car
by kazinator on Friday June 11, 2021 @09:51PM
(#27480674)
> Suddenly, you have no braking power, and the steering is all weird.
One day in in the early 1990's sometime, I was driving a car that started to aquaplane on a patch of wet road. Suddenly the car felt like a boat, and shimmied a bit and spun around. It caught some traction coming out of the wet patch, and at that point I could have stopped it faster, had the power brakes not failed respond in the normal way because the engine cut.
So I ended up striking the concrete divider with the rear corner of the car. I was not moving fast at that point; I didn't hit it very hard, but enough to cause damage and that could have been avoided had the brakes worked.
The engine might have cut because of lock up due to braking without traction. This was an automatic transmission, so that's another piece of idiocy to blame. In a manual, you wouldn't brake with the intent to stop without also hitting the clutch to disengage the engine; there is a good chance the engine and power brakes would not have cut out if that had happened in a manual.
(Electric cars should also fix all this.)
It could have been a pile up; this was in fairly busy, fast moving traffic with cars all around. Everyone behind managed to avoid me, luckily, and, equally luckily, the cars in front who were likely oblivious to the situation did not come to an unrelated halt, which would have seen me careen into them.
One day in in the early 1990's sometime, I was driving a car that started to aquaplane on a patch of wet road. Suddenly the car felt like a boat, and shimmied a bit and spun around. It caught some traction coming out of the wet patch, and at that point I could have stopped it faster, had the power brakes not failed respond in the normal way because the engine cut.
So I ended up striking the concrete divider with the rear corner of the car. I was not moving fast at that point; I didn't hit it very hard, but enough to cause damage and that could have been avoided had the brakes worked.
The engine might have cut because of lock up due to braking without traction. This was an automatic transmission, so that's another piece of idiocy to blame. In a manual, you wouldn't brake with the intent to stop without also hitting the clutch to disengage the engine; there is a good chance the engine and power brakes would not have cut out if that had happened in a manual.
(Electric cars should also fix all this.)
It could have been a pile up; this was in fairly busy, fast moving traffic with cars all around. Everyone behind managed to avoid me, luckily, and, equally luckily, the cars in front who were likely oblivious to the situation did not come to an unrelated halt, which would have seen me careen into them.