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by semi-extrinsic 2849 days ago
Braking systems are controlled by a dedicated embedded software system that's extremely well-understood and well-tested (probably even formally verified). All it does is check the ABS (and anti-skid) sensors and moderate the braking pressure to avoid locking the wheels. It also has a fail-safe system that gets rigorously tested, e.g. if a sensor fails. All possible values of all inputs are known, and the configurational space of those inputs is small enough that you can exhaustively test correctness.

It's plainly obvious that a braking system controller software is a very different beast from an autonomous car software, and I have no problem understanding why someone would trust th former and not the latter.
1 comments
charleslmunger 2848 days ago
> Braking systems are controlled by a dedicated embedded software system that's extremely well-understood and well-tested (probably even formally verified).

Are you sure? That code is closed source, and the peek behind the curtain we saw with Toyota's investigation did not inspire confidence:

http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende...

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semi-extrinsic 2848 days ago
That's a really interesting article for sure. But it does highlight that Toyota was being unusual in not following industry-wide (voluntary) coding standards for safety-critical embedded systems in cars, and they ended up losing big in court. So I do think (hope) that this example is worst-case, not normal.
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