Do we have brake override?

[sbergman27]

Originally Posted by BLH

In the automatic. The shift selector tells the ECU to change to neutral. Get the ECU confused enough and maybe it will not shift into neutral. Manuals no contest. Move to neutral it is in neutral.

But what if the manual transmission's shift lever jams? What if I'm in an elevator and the cable breaks and all the secondary safeguards malfunction? What if I'm having dinner in a revolving restaurant and there's a power surge which slings me through the window to my death, while the remaining diners must deal with the Ginsu Knives that come flying out of the kitchen as the restaurant spins up?

Or maybe... just maybe... none of these things are very likely? Maybe people are simply irrationally distrustful of software. And maybe... just maybe... the historically dismal quality of consumer grade software like... well... Microsoft Windows... has done a lot to fuel that irrational distrust.

But the embedded software world is a completely different ball game. Particularly when that embedded software is controlling critical systems. People view the ECU as though it's running the same slap-dash software as their ever-problematic laptops. And it just ain't so.

-Steve