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Benz remotely controlled vehicle stuck in cruise control mode for 1h at 120km/h
- vinay427 9y agoThis is a somewhat misleading title. The car was intentionally set to cruise control by the owner, but the cruise control could not be turned off until Mercedes remotely found a way to disable it about 100km later.
- programbreeding 9y agoPersonally that's exactly what I got from the title; it says it was stuck in cruise control. To me that indicates cruise control had been enabled, and then became stuck on.
- vinay427 9y agoI believe I was misled by "remotely controlled vehicle stuck in cruise control," which (to me) implies that the remote control feature was somehow relevant to not being able to disable the cruise control. The article did not talk about remote control until it mentioned using it to disable the cruise control.
- Silhouette 9y agoI'm not sure what is more disturbing here, the fact that the car had such a dangerous malfunction in the first place, the fact that there was no reliable hardware-based mechanism to bring it safely to a halt when the software failed catastrophically, or the fact that the service team could remote in and take control of the vehicle. Everything about this is not just bad in itself but betrays a more fundamental lack of safe and secure design.
- cevn 9y agoTotally agreed. Why can't he just slam the brakes? I thought they are supposed to be stronger than the engine?!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- olliej 9y agoElectronic control - it’s not a direct physical connection anymore. Follow on for mechanics/mechanical engineers: if the accelerator is down and you’re already moving, can the brakes stop a car? It seems like you’d either not stop or “break” abs and force the wheels to lock which is also bad at speed...
- vegardx 9y agoThis is complete nonsense, go into any car without starting it and pump the breaks.
- Skunkleton 9y agoIts not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_by_wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_by_wire
- tialaramex 9y agoThe ABS system is based on monitoring the way the wheels move and comparing it to how a car can move, in particular since the car is either moving or not, if just one wheel is stopping but the others are not, that's clearly wrong and the ABS tries to prevent that by reducing braking for that wheel. Going from some minimum speed to zero on all wheels is fine, that means now the car is stopped (or, for example, you went off a cliff and are actually now flying through the air - ABS can't help you in this case).
- ceejayoz 9y agoI'd really like to know what else the remote access allows them to control.
- olliej 9y agoI assume the entire ECU, that said maybe they treated it as stolen and triggered a remote stop through an anti theft mechanism?
- martimarkov 9y agoI mean even Formula 1 cars have the breaking system being outside of the computer control. Like we have totally solved this problem before. Why would you remove hardware override is beyond me... https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/inside-f1/rules-regs/Brake_system.html https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/inside-f1/rules-reg...
- maxxxxx 9y agoThat headline is misleading. I read it as them controlling it for 1 hour which wasn't the case. I am a little surprised that the brakes didn't work. Are brakes "fly-by-wire" now? Otherwise you should be able to slam the brakes even if the car is full throttle. I have tried this with several cars and the brakes we always stronger than the engine.
- kirillseva 9y agoBrakes are fly-by-wire on new cars because slamming the brake is not the most optimal strategy for stopping the car as fast as you can. And it can also damage the car.
- antris 9y agoI'd choose damaging the car over this scenario any day.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoNo one is trying to make that argument
- maxxxxx 9y agoI also don't know how braking hard would damage the car.
- djrogers 9y agoNo - ABS works without drive-by-wire, and was available in cars for decades before DBW systems were.
- ataturk 9y agoEvery car needs a mechanical engine kill switch just like a motorcycle. Needs to be done now.
- wallace_f 9y ago>because Would government getting control over our cars be that much more unbelievable than of our phones?
- yalogin 9y agoInterestingly this has nothing to do with self driving. Though, if the dealer could control is remotely why did it take an hour to do so?
- ptero 9y agoMay be the (designed) logic flaw. My guess is on a safety override that painted itself into a corner. For example, no remote override of a cruise control while moving.
- tritium 9y agoThis makes me want less software control in my vehicle. Ideally none.
- mulmen 9y agoSo carburetors and no abs or traction control?
- endianswap 9y agoABS is a solved problem without requiring software.
- mulmen 9y agoI may have missed something but please point me to an ABS system that does not use sensors and software to actuate the pressure modulator.
- Skunkleton 9y agoIm not saying I agree with OP, but you picked three things that existed in cars before computers.
- mulmen 9y agoABS uses software, I'm not aware of a mechanical ABS. Limited slip differentials in all their varieties still don't do what stability control and traction control do. You need software for the systems to perform in a way we have come to expect. A car without any software at all would be carbureted and have no ABS or traction/stability control.
- Skunkleton 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Early_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Early... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_injection#Mechanical_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_injection#Mechanical_inje... I'm not saying computers don't do these things better.
- ag56 9y agoWhy couldn't you just hit the ignition to turn the engine off?
- telesilla 9y agoNew cars these days don't all have this option: electronic starters have keyless ignition, activated when the key is nearby. http://www.worldwidemotors.com/blog/how-to-use-push-button-start-in-your-mercedes-benz/ http://www.worldwidemotors.com/blog/how-to-use-push-button-s... Personally, I'm concerned there is no manual brake override. If I drove a Mercedes I'd test using manual ignition, maybe pulling the key out would stop the car.
- gruez 9y ago>activated when the key is nearby. throw the key out the window?
- ceejayoz 9y agoI tested this when my dad got one of the push-button start cars. Doesn't work, at least not in his Acura.
- vegardx 9y agoGive it a few minutes and it will start to complain, and then you will lose engine, but not electrical power.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Johnny555 9y agoDoesn't help on any keyless car I've ever used - the car will beep at you when the key leaves the vehicle, but the engine won't shut off until you hit the stop/start button. And in this case, that button apparently did not work.
- 9y ago
- martimarkov 9y agoI'm not sure how much i believe a post from facebook from "People's Daily, China". The video can for sure be named: "Police high speed chase through toll booth"
- vegardx 9y agoLots of stuff is completely off with this. If you're stuck in cruise control at 120km/h for an hour you will drive 120km, not 100km. Also, what about just turning the engine off? Or... break.
- smilekzs 9y ago> Xue, an amateur car racer himself, tried opening the car door slightly to help slow the car down, which slowed to 60km/h, but nothing else could be done And likely push-button ignite --- otherwise you can just pull the key out.
- ceejayoz 9y ago> Also, what about just turning the engine off? Or... break. It says the brakes didn't work, and push-button start cars don't have an easy way to "just turn the engine off".
- theothertom 9y agoMine has a "hold button for 5 seconds" type override - don't know if that's universal though.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoDon't tell me it's the ACPI hard shutdown signal, that would be scary.
- vegardx 9y agoYour breaks will always work, regardless of any electrical systems. You might lose boosters, but I doubt it, given that the car still has electrical power. Some newer cars come with electrical parking break, and those will refuse to engage if you're moving. A lot of people in this thread seems to confuse this with actual breaks.
- LiweiZ 9y agoSorry for the misleading title. I tried my best to contain the title short enough to submit. Please change the title for a better one. Or suggest a better one, I will change it ASAP. Thanks.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoSo I'd be really interested in knowing how a failure like this happens in a human-safety-critical application. I assume every software engineer under the age of ~50 would have learned about events like the Therac-25 incidents during their education. Is there genuinely no robust software quality regime in place for critical systems like this in vehicles? There are so many worrying things here: such a bad failure occurring in the first place; the lack of any physical fallback or failsafe; the ability of the dealer to remotely control the car's operation (!!) – any of these by themselves fills me with dread.
- hinkley 9y agoThere have been a lot of revolutions in the practice of software development but by and large, self reflection has evaded us. One of the leads and myself are the only people who call out the fact that we are humans and we will make mistakes. And on a 24/7 operation that means production issues will happen. The other lead insists we all act like robots and he gets frustrated when people don’t like his proposals.
- oconnore 9y agoReliability is expensive and slow. Companies hate expensive and slow, especially when you have a demo that basically does what you want sans edge cases.
- quadcore 9y agoOh actually, let say you compute a+b with a computer. Believe it or not, you aren't 100% sure the computer is gonna gives you the right answer. There is 3 types of failures that could happen, 1) a hardware failure, 2) a software failure, 3) a bit could be flipped by a cosmic particle.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoRight, but surely every engineer working on safety-critical systems would be aware of that, right? There are mitigations available, that I guess I naïvely assumed would be in place for a system that could end up killing dozens of people if it went wrong.
- sjclemmy 9y agoReminds me of reading the Fortean times when I was younger. Sounds like a made up or exaggerated story. Telltale statement > “According to a local media report”. So this is a report of a report. Hmmmm.
- mmjaa 9y agoCovert intelligence operation (hit-job) gone awry? Maybe the driver was a target of the CIA ..
- thesumofall 9y agoFeels difficult to believe. He reduced speed by 60kmh by opening a door “slightly”? Why did the cruise control not compensate for it? Both brake systems failed at the same time? In addition, the automatic gearbox was somehow stuck in D? Sorry, but I’m sure it’s either human error or a publicity stunt Edit: I didn’t know the C class has any remote control capabilities. Does anyone know more?
- oliv__ 9y agoWhat I mostly took away from this is that automakers can remotely force stop your vehicle if they so desire. Kind of creepy.
- Humdeee 9y agoI don't find it more or less creepy than what we discover companies doing under the hood on our smartphone apps, computers, sharing personal info, etc.
- djrogers 9y agoNothing about this story makes sense, and it's so sketchily sourced I'm surprised to see it here on HN. For starters if the problem was with cruise control, how would opening the drivers side door 'slightly' slow the car to half it's speed? Setting aside the physics here, cruise control would simply increase the throttle until it got back to it's set speed. Also questionable is the idea that MB would be able to remotely control the vehicle when every system other than the throttle had failed. Brakes failed, ignition failed, transmission failed, but the throttle and cruise control were still hunky-dory? That sounds a lot more like either a complete fabrication or someone who screwed up while trying to hack their car's CAN-BUS...
- lfowles 9y agoCruise control on both of my cars is closer to "set throttle" than "set speed". Neither will increase throttle to keep speed when going up a hill for example.
- endianswap 9y agoThat's not typical for cruise control; even cars in the 80s with cruise control would increase throttle uphills.
- lfowles 9y ago2009 Pontiac and a 2013 Fiat, so relatively modern. Couple of possibilities then, I suppose: * They do work towards a set speed, but I'm too impatient and reset the cruise control before they achieve it. * Cruise control operates differently on cars with manual transmissions. I've never actually observed cruise control behavior in an automatic because it's been broken on the automatics I've previously owned.
- rkangel 9y agoI have a 2001 Porsche Boxster (manual transmission). It will maintain speed as long as their is sufficient torque to do so in the current gear (or engine braking depending on uphill or down hill). Is it possible that you don't have much excess engine power at highway cruising speed and the car is only slowly responding to change in incline?
- Johnny555 9y agoI'm skeptical: During a tense time of waiting and praying, Xue, an amateur car racer himself, tried opening the car door slightly to help slow the car down, which slowed to 60km/h, but nothing else could be done If the car was trying to maintain 120kph, I'm skeptical that opening a door partially (or even all the way) slowed it to 60kph.
- m3kw9 9y agoThe fact that it was able to be remotely controlled is exposing it to a whole world of bugs and hacks
- rusbus 9y agoFWIW, this happened to a friend's Ford explorer with faulty electronics, self driving cars don't have a monopoly on automobile malfunctions
- yason 9y agoIn the "good" old days there were several things you could do: - turn off the ignition (now purely software-controlled in keyless systems) - put transmission to neutral (a physical link doesn't necessarily exist anymore in automatic transmissions, still possible in manuals) - jump on the brake pedal as hard as you can (I suspect that a hydraulic link to brakes must still exist, possibly by law, but there are ABS and stability control units in between that can add to or remove from the brake pressure so it's not entirely driver controlled anymore, could lead to a failure path) - use parking brake to assist in braking (now often controlled by an electric motor automatically, doesn't engage while driving) There were occasional similar failures like the accelerator pedal getting stuck under the floor mat or throttle cable getting stuck but you could do a number of things listed above. Cruise controls systems were heavily designed to disengage at the slightest disturbance because they were separate control modules: early vacuum-operated designs could—plausibly, I don't have first hand knowledge—have a microswitch in the brake pedal that would just pull a relay to shut off current from the control module, restoring normal accelerator operation. Pretty much bullet proof. Software is indeed capable of creating failure modes that were pretty much unimaginable previously.
- 4a0508659f7c6a1 9y agoI'd start pulling fuses, Die Hard style.
- Yetanfou 9y agoWhile this newish whiz-bang Mercedes Benz might be too modern to have a physical ignition lock these stories always make me wonder: why do all these people who are confronted with runaway vehicles forget the simple solution of switching off the engine? Just turn the key in the lock to the 'off' position but don't remove it, the engine will switch off and the car or motorbike will come to a halt. I've done this several times with my motorbike when one of the Bowden cables between the throttle grip and a carburetor froze during travel (as in 'water in cable freezes to ice', I ride the thing in wintertime here in Sweden). By switching the lock between 'on' and 'off' I've used it in a similar way as the 'blip switch' in early airplanes with rotary engines which lacked an adjustable throttle, they were either 'on' or 'off' and could be pulsed on landing by using the 'blip switch'. When I mention this people often start about losing power steering but that is of no concern, power steering is only effective at lower speeds anyway. Servo brakes are powered by the intake vacuum so that won't be an issue either, even it the vacuum fails or the power comes from another source (e.g. an electric or engine-driven pump) there is generally a pressure reservoir which holds enough pressure for several brake actions. And even in case the servo totally fails the brakes still work, as does the parking brake. To conclude, as long as you're in a vehicle with a physical ignition lock the first thing to try is just to switch off the engine. As long as you keep the key in the lock the steering lock should not engage (something to test next time you turn off the engine).