3 ms·

Safety-Critical Software: things every developer should know

• raxxorrax 6y ago
  The reality is that technical solutions can always fail. In medicine there is emphasis on giving human actors a kill switch (no, luckily not for the patient, phew...). Of course humans can make errors too but are still superior to do sanity checks. From what I understand about this issue, pilots were not able to overrule the system that had wrong sensory information. But to defend certifiers in such cases, their primary role is to ensure engineers sit down and think about all possible risks. They cannot ensure that every risk is accounted for. That is beyond anyone's ability. The primary role is to ensure this process isn't skipped completely and is executed with due diligence. Of course a pilot can have a heart attack while the copilot is more interested in the stewardess at that point, but a kill switch doesn't have to be a panic button, but there can be a conscious procedure to activate a state for handling exceptions. I think with today's technology it is still important to have such a mechanism to give back control.