Everyone who writes safety critical software should read this

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 03:26:31PM +0100, Chris wrote:
> On Thursday, 31 October 2013 at 13:32:19 UTC, Joseph Rushton
> Wakeling wrote:
> >On 31/10/13 13:49, Chris wrote:
> >>I wonder how people could drive 25 years ago!? No software on board.
> >>Gosh they must have been geniuses! ;)
> >
> >"At greater risk of an accident" != "Incapable of driving" ;-)
> 
> Fair enough. Well, I was once driving the companies BMW and the ABS
> etc. saved me when I came to a road that was iced over. I had no
> experience at all with the car. However, if BMW didn't have that
> stupid rear-wheel drive, I would have been fine anyway. Front-wheel
> drive is much safer, especially in wet and icy conditions. The
> danger is that people overestimate the power of these technologies
> and rely too much on them (which leads to dangerous situations on
> the road). I'm glad I learned how to drive when cars were still cars
> and not little space ships.

ABS is certainly a helpful thing, especially in inclement conditions
like snow/ice. But it's far from perfect. Once, I was going downhill on
an icy road and suddenly started to skid dangerously close to the car in
front of me. The ABS kicked in when I slammed the brakes, but it
couldn't regain traction on the ice.  At the last moment, I manually
pumped the brakes and managed to come to a shaky stop inches before I
hit the car in front.

You don't know how thankful I am for having learnt the concept of
pumping the brakes, ABS or not. I'm afraid too many driving instructors
nowadays just advise slamming the brakes and relying on the ABS to do
the job. It doesn't *always* work!


T

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