Cool tech, but just like steer by wire, I wouldn't trust it in a life or death situation
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Many modern cars are moving to steer by wire. Serious question, why wouldn't you trust your life to that when you very likely already do for acceleration and possibly for braking (depending on your vehicle).
why wouldn’t you trust your life to that when you very likely already do for acceleration and possibly for braking
I, for one, don't particularly trust those things either! Frankly, I intend to keep driving my (apparently non-modern) '90s and 2000s cars indefinitely because -- as a software engineer, a.k.a. the opposite of a luddite -- I do not accept having life-safety-critical equipment depending on closed-source software I can't properly control.
If you've ever flown you've depended on fly by wire systems to keep you safe and I personally don't see systems like this for land vehicles to be necessarily any less safe inheritanly. The main issues with all these things that I see is that auto manufacturers seem to be raking increasingly cavalier attitudes to vehicle safety and reliability these days in an effort to squeeze ever more profits.
Steer by wire in cars has neither the redundancy nor the oversight/certification that the system in planes does. But more importantly is actually a better system for a car? Is there something that mechanical power assisted steering can't do that would warrant the need for steer by wire?
If you’ve ever flown you’ve depended on fly by wire systems to keep you safe
If I'm flying it means I've already decided to put my trust in a pilot and it's up to him to manage the risk of systems failures, not me. It's an entirely different thing.
Now, if I were piloting a small plane myself, then it would be comparable -- but I'd probably want to have mechanical linkages between the yoke and the control surfaces in that case, too!
I've seen non-steer by wire cars in the ditch because the steering failed. The failure modes for software is different, but things like tie rod ends still break, and the older car the more likely that type of thing is to happen.
Steer-by-wire cars would still have tie-rod ends etc., though. In other words, they have all the same failure modes as purely mechanical steering, plus additional ones introduced by the servos and computers.
And sure, maintenance on old cars is a thing, but every car gets old eventually so there's not a real difference there.
In my case, my personal car is still old school or "analog" in those areas. I think that in the case of new cars, manufacturers make so many different models that I can't trust they've put the time into debugging and failure-proofing their software. Even the most reliable car brands have occasional hardware recalls, and software glitches in their media systems are fairly common. I'll need to do more research about what failsafes they have in place, but I'd feel more confident with a mechanical linkage than software
Might be fun to rip around in controlled environments, like tracks
Apparently it's self-balancing and potentially self-driving without a rider... My thoughts immediately go to the terminator bikes from Terminator Salvation.
I was thinking of the vehicles from Cyberpunk 2077
Jackie's Arch is preeeem
A: Pizza delivery by driverless motorbike, sounds great! B: But then it gets stolen. A: They can just as easy put a GPS-tracker in there. B: Put it in a steel cage that blocks all electromagnetic signals. Sell the parts and scrap the rest. A: Your glass is mostly half-empty, isn't it? B: Probably. But I would like a calzone though. A: I'll order two then. Including security.