4 ms·

For systems that are so critical to the safety of human life, I'm surprised that there isn't a mandatory third-party review of the firmware source code.

• kordless 12y ago
  No way, man. http://jalopnik.com/carmakers-want-to-make-working-on-your-car-illegal-beca-1699132210 http://jalopnik.com/carmakers-want-to-make-working-on-your-c...
  • reitzensteinm 12y ago
    I think those are two separate issues. Big corporations thrive with complex standards being imposed by governments, because it increases the barrier to competition. $50m in compliance costs might hurt Toyota a bit, but make the next Tesla unfeasible to get off the ground. Therefore, they'd most likely see it as a positive, even if some government employees got to see their trade secrets and the potential for leaks. On the other hand, there's no upside to aftermarket hacking of your product, and plenty of downside (from the corporate perspective).
• mikeash 12y ago
  Is there a mandatory third-party review of, for example, the mechanical design of a car? Serious question.
  • Sanddancer 12y ago
    By and large, yes. NHSTA testing could be considered one aspect of review. There are all sorts of other DoT reviews of various aspects of car design to ensure that various safety lessons learned through the years are applied to cars. Standards like the gas tank is in front of the rear axle to help prevent it from being punctured, the placement and configuration of the gear shifter -- it's why chryslers no longer have push button gear selectors and why no one has column mounted manual shifters any more. Auto ECUs really are an outlier in terms of auditing and examination.
    • Already__Taken 12y ago
      Do these ecu's do anything considered special that you couldn't just mandate their specs to be open and let the public ridicule do the rest?
      • fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        There are some bits in them that would/could rightly be considered proprietary, air/fuel maps, ignition timing, transmission shift logic, etc. I don't see any reason why those proprietary bits can't be segregated from the code we're interested in. So, to answer your question, maybe they do, but probably not by necessity.
• LVB 12y ago
  Is there evidence that auto firmware issues are a major cause of injury, enough to mandate such a thing? There is already a heavy burden to comply with standards. I recent called our city's public works dept to propose changing the traffic signage/signals at an extremely confusing and potentially dangerous intersection (every person I've talked to about it hates making the turn there...). The lead traffic engineer was very understanding and agreed it was a terrible intersection. But the hard stats showed few accidents there, so he'd never be able to redirect money from more problematic areas...
  • Bjartr 12y ago
    Interestingly, the fact that the intersection feels confusing forces people to pay close attention to figure out what's going on. That can lead to fewer accidents in some cases. I can't currently find it, but I once read about a roundabout that had accident problems, but had very good signage. People felt entirely in control going into it and weren't paying as much attention as they could be. By removing the signage people wouldn't inadvertently take for granted the behavior of the other drivers, they'd slow down more, they'd pay closer attention, and as a result the accident rate dropped.
• revelation 12y ago
  Given that we barely test drivers beyond a drive around the local walmart lot, I would argue the level of review is more than adequate. Need to focus where it actually makes a difference.