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When you introduce the functionality to disable a traditional safety product, you have to think about the dependency chain and how you design that system to pre

by g_p 5y ago

When you introduce the functionality to disable a traditional safety product, you have to think about the dependency chain and how you design that system to prevent issues. Vehicles with a switchable airbag tend to display a fairly prominent red light when the airbag disable switch is used. I'm pretty sure that on some vehicles I've had, it's hard-wired to light up when the switch is used to disable the airbag. You'd have to break the light to "override" that warning. It is possible the makers of this product have done likewise, and the arming of their system is done with the same signal that's used to display a green light. But given the sheer complexity of it (Bluetooth, app Integration, server side checks), it seems likely this won't be the case - maybe the light is only momentary, in which case such hardware failsafes won't be in place. Nonetheless, adding complexity to a safety critical product should be scrutinized and held to the level of engineering as any other safety critical product. A safety critical product which will cease to function in its safety role without the ability to call home to a server seems to fail at some early hurdles of being engineered as a safety product, so I would respectfully disagree with your starting point that they've thought about this and engineered their lockout as a safety system (since it fails unsafe, rather than safe).

dahart 5y ago
Sure, I completely agree with everything you said about engineering and safety in general. I don't understand the speculation on your part about it seeming likely to you that they're making obviously and absurdly bad safety critical design decisions just because it's complex and you haven't looked for or seen any evidence that they're not doing that. I'm saying there is evidence they're considering this issue, because they wrote about it in the product page's FAQ. They at least intended to design the system so that lapses in the financing plan do not compromise safety in any way, and they wrote about that intention explicitly. That is evidence to indicate they've thought about it. All speculation otherwise is just FUD.
- setr 5y ago
  Because the safe thing is to not do something unnecessarily dangerous in the first place. You don't secure your core system by being very careful with your backdoor access -- you secure it by not introducing a backdoor in the first place. A critical safety device should have absolutely no way to be disabled, intended or not, without severe intervention or total and complete failure of the device. They've introduced greater potential for absolute disaster in their edge cases. And more likely than not, very little has to go wrong for a user to end up dead. Also of note: why is the battery LED on the back of the suit? If the battery dies mid-route (or a bug disables the vest), there's no way to tell? They don't note any audio cues.
  - dahart 5y ago
    I agree about everything you said about safety design, but Vice and uninformed comments have guided you into being mad about this today, and it is not the safety issue you think it is. The article was spreading FUD with the idea that the subscription lapse could cause a fatal crash. The product was designed to prevent that. Yes, there are reasons to be careful with electronic control of safety critical systems, but despite that fact, we are completely surrounded by safety critical systems with electronic control. Every vehicle you own, use or ride in has them.
    - setr 5y ago
      Electric controls are not the problem here; it's designing anti-failsafes into the component. AFAIK cars could be shut down remotely (which is bad, and fairly stupid), and warning systems are optional and conditional (e.g. pedestrian warning, emergency braking, etc) but the core safety systems (seatbelts, ABS, airbags, etc) follow the rule prescribed: It works, or it's been disabled by significant intervention, or it's totally and utterly failed. You don't play with uptime when it comes to this kind of device. That is, they don't intentionally introduce a backdoor to disable the system. Or rather, they don't intentionally increase the risk surface of critical safety devices. The death star is not supposed to be your design inspiration.
      - dahart 5y ago
        It's not fair to frame it as an anti-failsafe, when it was designed to prevent shutting down after the ride starts. The core safety systems in modern cars that you cite can all be disabled electronically. (BTW, think a bit about a Tesla.) This really isn't a the good example of pro-safety critical design you think it is, cars have exactly the same "back doors" as this airbag vest at the engineering / electronic control level.
        setr 5y ago
        >This really isn't a the good example of pro-safety critical design you think it is, cars have exactly the same "back doors" as this airbag vest at the engineering / electronic control level. You're going to have to back that up to convince me of that, because as I said, AFAIK that's the not the case (not that I know much on car safety mechanisms -- but I've yet to hear/see anything suggesting to the contrary beyond this statement). >It's not fair to frame it as an anti-failsafe, when it was designed to prevent shutting down after the ride starts. You know what; that did the trick. I'm convinced. You're right, if they designed it as purely a boot-up flag (it turns on, or it turns off, but it's designed to be 100% up unconditionally once on) then it doesn't conflict with anything I've said. There's no additional risk being introduced that I can imagine from this setup -- beyond that inherit to the problem. I still find the framing pretty dumb -- they should have just called it a rental -- but otherwise I'm fully convinced this is a non-issue.

by g_p 5y ago

dahart 5y ago

Sure, I completely agree with everything you said about engineering and safety in general. I don't understand the speculation on your part about it seeming likely to you that they're making obviously and absurdly bad safety critical design decisions just because it's complex and you haven't looked for or seen any evidence that they're not doing that. I'm saying there is evidence they're considering this issue, because they wrote about it in the product page's FAQ. They at least intended to design the system so that lapses in the financing plan do not compromise safety in any way, and they wrote about that intention explicitly. That is evidence to indicate they've thought about it. All speculation otherwise is just FUD.

setr 5y ago
Because the safe thing is to not do something unnecessarily dangerous in the first place. You don't secure your core system by being very careful with your backdoor access -- you secure it by not introducing a backdoor in the first place. A critical safety device should have absolutely no way to be disabled, intended or not, without severe intervention or total and complete failure of the device. They've introduced greater potential for absolute disaster in their edge cases. And more likely than not, very little has to go wrong for a user to end up dead. Also of note: why is the battery LED on the back of the suit? If the battery dies mid-route (or a bug disables the vest), there's no way to tell? They don't note any audio cues.
- dahart 5y ago
  I agree about everything you said about safety design, but Vice and uninformed comments have guided you into being mad about this today, and it is not the safety issue you think it is. The article was spreading FUD with the idea that the subscription lapse could cause a fatal crash. The product was designed to prevent that. Yes, there are reasons to be careful with electronic control of safety critical systems, but despite that fact, we are completely surrounded by safety critical systems with electronic control. Every vehicle you own, use or ride in has them.
  - setr 5y ago
    Electric controls are not the problem here; it's designing anti-failsafes into the component. AFAIK cars could be shut down remotely (which is bad, and fairly stupid), and warning systems are optional and conditional (e.g. pedestrian warning, emergency braking, etc) but the core safety systems (seatbelts, ABS, airbags, etc) follow the rule prescribed: It works, or it's been disabled by significant intervention, or it's totally and utterly failed. You don't play with uptime when it comes to this kind of device. That is, they don't intentionally introduce a backdoor to disable the system. Or rather, they don't intentionally increase the risk surface of critical safety devices. The death star is not supposed to be your design inspiration.
    - dahart 5y ago
      It's not fair to frame it as an anti-failsafe, when it was designed to prevent shutting down after the ride starts. The core safety systems in modern cars that you cite can all be disabled electronically. (BTW, think a bit about a Tesla.) This really isn't a the good example of pro-safety critical design you think it is, cars have exactly the same "back doors" as this airbag vest at the engineering / electronic control level.
      - setr 5y ago
        >This really isn't a the good example of pro-safety critical design you think it is, cars have exactly the same "back doors" as this airbag vest at the engineering / electronic control level. You're going to have to back that up to convince me of that, because as I said, AFAIK that's the not the case (not that I know much on car safety mechanisms -- but I've yet to hear/see anything suggesting to the contrary beyond this statement). >It's not fair to frame it as an anti-failsafe, when it was designed to prevent shutting down after the ride starts. You know what; that did the trick. I'm convinced. You're right, if they designed it as purely a boot-up flag (it turns on, or it turns off, but it's designed to be 100% up unconditionally once on) then it doesn't conflict with anything I've said. There's no additional risk being introduced that I can imagine from this setup -- beyond that inherit to the problem. I still find the framing pretty dumb -- they should have just called it a rental -- but otherwise I'm fully convinced this is a non-issue.