March 11, 2006

Fly by wire

Scary story from England -- from The Telegraph:
The accelerator has jammed, the brakes have burned out and I'm trapped in my BMW doing 130mph
A motorist was trapped in his car driving at almost 130mph for 60 miles after the accelerator jammed.

Kevin Nicolle, 25, was unable to stop the automatic BMW going at top speed after the malfunction on the A1.

His terrifying journey, which was followed by four police cars and a helicopter, ended when he smashed the car into a roundabout, flipping it on its roof.

Amazingly, the former lorry driver walked away from the accident uninjured.

"The whole thing was just a blur," he said. "I can't get it out of my head. I was terrified, hysterical and crying.
It will be interesting to see BMW's report on this. Fly by wire has been around aviation for a long time but the efforts taken to make it bomb-proof are major. Boeing uses three different kinds of computers for each system and they vote on the outcome. The different CPUs require that the same software be written three different times. This basically eliminates both hardware and software glitches. Fly by wire is just coming into the higher-end cars with electronic foot-pedals and steering. I would be curious to see how they plan for eventual failure. All this aside, I wonder why the guy didn't just turn off his ignition when he realized that the car was not going to stop. Posted by DaveH at March 11, 2006 11:02 AM
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