Comment on YouTube’s Loaded With EV Disinformation
limelight79@lemm.ee 10 months agoI’m not sure I follow your point here. Even necessary parts of a car failed for you, and almost caused injury. Now people are advocating adding unnecessary parts to cars that may also fail and cause injuries or death.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I would have thought this was straightforward enough…
Your whole comment that I replied to was about faults in advanced/electronic systems as the only reasons that make cars unsafe to drive.
“Unnecessary” is in the eye of the beholder.
They were very few parts needed to actually make an automobile go into motion and be steerable, but there’s many additional bells and whistles that people considered necessary for them when they purchase a vehicle.
limelight79@lemm.ee 10 months ago
The reason I didn’t understand your comment is that your examples just proved my point - safety critical items WERE NOT VETTED correctly. What makes you think the auto manufacturers are being careful with software? They aren’t, or are doing the bare minimum. I listed multiple software issues with various manufacturer that never should have happened.
Look, I’m not a luddite. I like having nav and satellite radio and all of that. But adding a game to the already questionable software development in a car is insane. Cars are a safety critical item and everything added to them should be carefully considered and thoroughly vetted.
Someone compared it to a cell phone, but cell phones aren’t 3,000 lbs of heavy machinery barreling down a highway at 70 mph. A phone needing to reset or whatever is a minor inconvenience compared to what could go wrong with a serious software bug in a car. I’m not sure why people would argue against this, it seems self-evident. I provided examples.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Insane? That’s the word you’re going to use, really? Seems overly extreme.
I wouldn’t disagree with that paragraph in general, but, it doesn’t mean not used.
It’s just a computer. Asking for cars never to use computers going forward in the future is a non-starter, that’s not how Humanity works.
Would your concerns go away if somebody was doing the exact same things I’ve mentioned with a laptop, instead of using the computer built into the vehicle?
(And in case it has to be explicitly said, I’m speaking towards while the car is not being driven.)
limelight79@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Nope.
I don’t know how I can explain this better, so I’ll summarize.
Cars are safety-critical items, being they weigh 3000+ lbs and travel at high speed and can kill people when something goes wrong.
It’s critical that the software that controls the drivetrain, brakes, etc. be as perfect as it possibly can be because of the first point.
Adding more features increases the likelihood of something going wrong.
I don’t understand why this is even an argument. It’s common sense. Why would anyone disagree with those three points? (Unless they’re the reason vehicle deaths are up…maybe they just don’t care and see their car like a cheap appliance and ignore the “potential to kill” factor.)
Your comments about the hatch and the tires only prove my point: Auto manufacturers already make plenty of mistakes on things that have existed for decades, things that should be solved problems by now. Why would software be any different? They’re going to fuck things up there, too. And already have; I gave examples before.
More complex software means more bugs; anyone in software development or testing can tell you that. These are known facts. What if that game has some bug in it that lets hackers take over the brakes remotely? Unlikely, sure. Impossible? Definitely not - again, look at the Uconnect 8.4 issue in FCA vehicles a few years back; a remote attacker could break into the car and do just that. It’s an extremely scary bug. Fortunately they were white hat and FCA actually listened to them and worked with them to patch the bugs, but what would have happened if it hadn’t been white hats that found it? Or the manufacturer didn’t care to listen, as often happens with software vulnerabilities?
No one would accept a computer program that runs an X-ray machine overdosing people (which has happened). It’s the same thing. The FDA would hopefully never approve an X-ray machine that has Tetris on it, either, for the same reasons we shouldn’t accept it in cars.
The advantages of computer control are huge, we’re getting more mileage and more power out of smaller engines all the time. I’m not recommending we get rid of computers in cars. I’m saying it’s imperative that any additional features are weighed against the benefit. Playing Tetris on a dashboard screen is not a useful feature in a car that can’t be easily handled by the smartphone you almost certainly also own.
I don’t think there’s any more to be gained by discussing this further. I can’t make it any clearer. Good day.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 10 months ago
What, you’re expecting the car to explode if somebody plays a Netflix movie or video game while waiting for someone to come out of the store?
And again, if I wanted to, I can make the same argument you just did (carefulness) about the hydraulics that hold the rear hatch door up, or the tires that were on my SUV.