[magduf]

Software flaws in cars usually aren't fatal. If your car has a failure, you just pull over on the side of the road. You can't do that in an airplane.

>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.

[umvi]

> 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.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-09-1...

https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles/ford-issues-recall-...

[magduf]

That's not a loss of steering, that's a loss of power assist. You can still steer a vehicle just fine without power assist; you only need the assist at very low speeds.

[zaarn]

I've driven a car with intermittent failure of power steering, it's not impossible and at higher speed, the wheel provide stablization on their own already.

[tigershark]

That is a loss of power steering, it’s not a loss of steering. You can still steer the car although it requires more strength at low speeds.

[asynchronous13]

To be fair, "sudden loss of steering" is different than "sudden loss of power-assisted steering".

[tialaramex]

And it's actually comparable to the _intended_ failure mode of a 737 Max. If the system fails you can't let the computer control the trim, so there are manual trim wheels provided and you switch off electronic trim. Like the steering wheel of a large modern car, these wheels are mechanically connected to the thing you want to change but if you're feeble like me you'll struggle to even move them which is why the computer was in the loop.

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.

[magduf]

>We probably don't want (and Boeing doesn't want) to make 737 Max certification have a "Physical strength check"

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.

[rightbyte]

How about bogger trim wheels, or servo motors for those?

[tialaramex]

I'm guessing you meant "bigger"? Otherwise I don't know what a bogger trim is. The wheels already have servo motors, but understandably the cut-out cuts those out also.

[Johnny555]

Software flaws in cars usually aren't fatal. If your car has a failure, you just pull over on the side of the road. You can't do that in an airplane.

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)

[ngcc_hk]

My old Auto car did that quite a few times and another just stop in the middle of a highway. Car broke down especially old and cheap car.

[bumby]

mechanical link between the steering wheel and the front wheels.

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

[quicklyfrozen]

It's not common at all. The Q50 had it for a while then reverted, and still had a manual link for backup. Beyond that, just some prototypes.

[bumby]

You’re right. I was conflating electrically powered steering with steer by wire. In either case, EPS relies on software to determine the amount of force/torque rather than hydraulic/mechanical means.

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

[magduf]

EPS has been used in economy cars for years now; most cars on the market now probably have it. The few laggards that don't have EHPS (electro-hydraulic PS), where software runs a pump that pressurizes the hydraulic system.

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.

[bumby]

There’s been some issues related to recalls on EPS. An excerpt below is from a 2015 GM truck recall:

“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

[magduf]

This doesn't sound like a big deal. Electronics normally can't function when system voltage is too low, and that can happen in a car if the battery is weak and the alternator isn't producing enough power (e.g., at very low speeds and with a high electrical load, such as making a sharp turn in a parking lot with a nearly-dead battery).

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.