[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Risk of unsafe software in automobiles?
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Ask HN: Risk of unsafe software in automobiles?
I may buy a car (new or used) soon and am a little worried about
all the software in cars these days. Software can control pretty
much every aspect of a modern vehicle, and so the idea of bugs in a
vehicle's software scares me from a safety perspective. Poor
software engineering has been implicated in automobile safety
incidents in the past[1]. I'm aware of the NASA/JPL rules for
developing safety-critical software[2] but I'm not sure if any car
manufacturers follow anything similar. Does anyone here have any
knowledge of the software development practices of any automakers
and what they do to ensure safety and reliability? And is there
anything else I can do to mitigate this risk (short of buying a
very old car, which would have other safety downsides)? [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration [2]
http://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/P10.pdf
Author : jacobevelyn
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-12-28 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
| freedomben wrote:
| Your concern is well founded given the proliferation of utter
| shit that is modern car "entertainment" centers. Scare quotes
| because some safety important things _are_ handled by those. If
| you don 't think so, drive my 2017 Ford Expedition when it's -10F
| outside and the windshield fogs up beyond visibility levels
| because the damn defroster (and other environment controls)
| doesn't work and and the windshield is fogging up. Or try to back
| up and see the backup-camera glitching out.
|
| However, _most_ of the safety systems software is held to a very
| high standard, and much happens in embedded systems where the
| surface level for software foot-guns (such as state) are minimal.
| I wouldn 't worry about buying a new car for these reasons.
| Though I would try to find one with as many physical buttons as
| possible.
| f1shy wrote:
| No amount of MISRA or ISO26262 or tests or any kind will help if
| the people doing the software are direct out-of-the-university
| mechanical engineers or physicist, who had _at most_ one or two
| semesters of some kind of programming course.
|
| The reality is that this is the current state of affairs. Most of
| people doing software for cars have not the foggiest idea what
| software is really about.
|
| All the software I read is just impossible to understand. And no
| standard help in many cases.
|
| Some examples I've seen in code: - Use of kind of hungarian
| notation to the point that a loop variable was named something
| like "uibe32bb_i_lns" - Comments in other human languages that
| were not english - Use of recursion - Have seen a call like name1
| ::name2::name3::name4::name5::name6::name7::name8::name9::name10:
| :name11::name12::name13::name14. The names where some kind of
| hungarian notation, those calls where everywhere in the code. -
| Lines more than 1000 characters wide, as a rule - Files north of
| 100kB of code I can go on and on and on....
|
| Some examples of exchanges with people:
|
| 1) Software architect, of a ECU: one programer asks for the
| memory and CPU budget for a function. The reply was "I'm the
| architect, I've no idea what you are talking about"
|
| 2) System chief architect, for a _very important_ project of a
| _big_ auto-maker: one engineer says something about software
| errors. The architect interrupts, and explains that the software
| _never_ makes an error. Because a computer only does what it is
| told to make. -- that is terrible enough, for example ignoring
| the possibility or a SEU, but he goes further, to say that any
| kind of test is not necessary, because, SW, as stated, makes no
| errors.
|
| Some general points: - 99% of people in "SW" do not know what gdb
| is. They debug by "cout <<" - I found nobody who knows what tail
| recursion is - 90% are only able to program, to some extent, in
| one of C++ or Python, but no other language. - Mentioning Ada,
| Lisp, Forth will trigger a waterfall of insults saying those are
| old and should never be used.
|
| I keep buying the most basic cars. I'm genuinely terrified to
| think in anything automatic in my car.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > Some examples I've seen in code
|
| You are not reading it correctly. It is not code as everyone
| knows it. It's like an electrical circuit with variable names
| attached to each conductor, and the code propagates information
| like electricity would.
|
| There's tools dedicated to this, able to draw pictures of such
| code circuits (e.g. Simulink, Ascet). And such pictures can be
| automatically translated into c-code, that looks even worse
| than anything translated manually.
|
| In the end, of course the tests prove that the code works like
| the picture of the circuit shows, and therefore the car must
| work correctly! This avoids the need for anyone working on only
| the code to understand a car.
|
| In reality, things usually work in the end only because of how
| simple everything is and high number of iterations.
| melony wrote:
| In their defense, gdb is a pain in the ass to use if your
| editor doesn't come with integrated support. The debugger that
| comes with CLion/Visual Studio is perfectly adequate. Ada is
| useful for automotive. Lisp and Forth, not so much (especially
| since Lisp isn't usually used in hard real-time applications).
| This isn't the 1980s, MCUs aren't that memory constrained.
| Knowledge of obscure programming languages doesn't necessarily
| make you a better software engineer. I want my automotive
| embedded engineer to have a solid grasp of computer
| architecture, real-time safety protocols, and defensive
| programming. I don't see a problem with a Korean/Japanese car
| manufacturer having their documentation in a non-English
| language. As long as they do everything in-house and don't
| outsource to India like Boeing I have no problem with it.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I mirror your experience exactly. Well, maybe except the
| recursion one, that I have not seen... yet.
| slt2021 wrote:
| you would be more terrified after interaction with security
| engineers at OEMs - people who hold keys for the OEM's entire
| kingdom with admin access to everything running outdated
| OSs/systems well past last day of support date
| f1shy wrote:
| Yes. I know. :)
| protortyp wrote:
| If you're interested in this topic, you might want to check out
| ASRG[1]. It's a community of safety and security professionals in
| the industry working to improve standards. They share their
| research openly and have regular in-person and online events
| where you can reach out to people.
|
| [1] https://asrg.io/
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| "Safety" and "Security" are considered separate topics in the
| automotive world, even though there's some overlap between
| them. There are usually completely separate teams with
| different skillsets responsible for each at any given
| manufacturer. ASRG is pretty focused on the security side
| rather than the safety side.
| owalt wrote:
| Short version of the difference: Safety = This shouldn't
| cause harm. Security = This should be hard to hack.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Cars have had software controlling essential functionality for
| decades. It didn't suddenly appear when touchscreens did.
| f1shy wrote:
| Now is totally different. The software used to be done with
| graphical tools, with boxes like simulink, but with only basic
| logical and arithmetic operations.
|
| Now they are trying to write C++.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Thankfully, most non-Tesla manufacturers don't trust critical
| systems to software.
| [deleted]
| staunch wrote:
| 1. Cars have had computers in them for a very long time now.
|
| 2. The code, in many cases, is probably an unmaintainable mess.
| Embedded programming is not always modern programming, for good
| and bad.
|
| 3. Today, the computers in cars are doing more, and the systems
| are more complex. It's reasonable to expect more serious problems
| as a result.
|
| 4. Companies do safety testing, of course, but there's no such
| thing as as "100%" test coverage for complex physical machines
| running outside of a lab.
|
| 5. The best way to judge the safety of cars is the best way to
| judge safety for airplanes: let other people test them out for a
| while and then check whether or not they report problems.
| f1shy wrote:
| This is absolutely the case. Until more or less now, the
| software was made with systems like simulink (but much much
| simpler), where a mechanical engineer could build blocks of
| very simple functions, using AND, NOT, OR gates, and
| mathematical operations.
|
| Now the companies are migrating to real programming in C++, and
| it is a terrible mess. There are just not enough people with
| software competence to drive it.
|
| I've seen people trying to do L4 automated systems with this
| blocks. Pages and pages and pages of boxes (which can only be
| the basic logical function, and the 4 basic arithmetic
| operations!!!). Of course the project didn't go anywhere!
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| You're thinking about this the wrong way. Don't optimize for the
| car behaving perfectly--like you said it's impossible for you to
| verify this. And even if you could formally prove a car is
| perfectly behaved, you are driving on streets with other cars and
| other unpredictable people who could just as easily crash into
| you.
|
| Optimize this problem by buying a car with the best safety
| rating. This is something that can be objectively measured, both
| in crash testing/labs and from reviews of real-world crash
| results. Expect that a crash could be inevitable as it is totally
| out of your control. Optimize for the best odds of surviving a
| crash without issues.
| Yujf wrote:
| Problem is that if you do that, you make the road less safe for
| everyone else
| vel0city wrote:
| Only if you're then also willing to go up a size in vehicle.
| You can still choose more or less safe vehicles from within
| the same class. A 2022 Corolla is way safer than a 1998
| Corolla, that 1998 Corolla is safer than a 1966 Corolla, etc.
| Tomte wrote:
| ISO 26262.
| smt88 wrote:
| Don't buy a Tesla and you'll be fine. I work in auto insurance
| and the other OEMs actually care about safety and testing of
| software. Tesla has the most bugs by far.
| manscrober wrote:
| I don't know about tesla since I haven't had a chance to drive
| one yet, but the number of bugs especially in the interface but
| also in driver's "assistance" in other cars(VW, BMW) makes me
| doubt that it makes a noticeable difference - at least with
| tesla there is a chance they will fix it
| smt88 wrote:
| Other OEMs fix bugs all the time.
|
| The difference is that Tesla has bugs throughout its
| software, including critical systems.
|
| The other OEMs are extremely slow and methodical about
| updating things like their fuel-injection software, and that
| stuff goes through incredible amounts of QA. The same is not
| true of Tesla. They're a company that, at Musk's direction,
| do not prioritize QA or human life.
| kube-system wrote:
| Many of the electronic systems in traditional automaker's
| vehicles are made by a variety of other OEMs anyway. So
| judging by automaker brand may not really be a good judge of
| the engineering development of those subsystems. The
| infotainment might be made by Panasonic and the driver
| assistance might be made by Bosch.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| The industry is really good at inventing the wheel multiple
| times. Even in a simple case: Two car manufacturers, same
| supplier for the same kind of control unit - the hardware
| will likely look similar, but most likely both are running
| almost completely different software.
| kube-system wrote:
| > the hardware will likely look similar, but most likely
| both are running almost completely different software.
|
| And automotive parts OEMs could run down to Best Buy,
| point at a Surface Book and a Macbook, and say the same
| thing.
| piceas wrote:
| They are interconnected though. Reputation for faults add
| up. To me the following is vw's fault.
|
| I've recently had an id4's location fail, and the map was
| all over the place. It got worse as I drove on.
|
| Annoying, but I thought not a safety issue until the speed
| limiter caused the car to attempt to slow down by more than
| 100kph as it was reporting it was somewhere else.
| kkfx wrote:
| I know a connected car, as most modern cars are, can potentially
| be controlled from remote.
|
| That means you can get OTA upgrades that 99% of the times will
| work flawlessly, but a day may do not, the day you are in a rush
| in the early morning.
|
| Since most connected cars are de-facto owned by their vendor a
| potential breach or deliberate sabotage might brick ALL at once
| across the globe or in some specific areas/countries.
|
| ...
|
| A modern car is a car co-piloted by a human and a computer. A
| local airgapped computer might have bugs, a connected one might
| have vulnerabilities. Be more scared about them.
|
| In mere local safety terms I can say most cars I know are
| _partially mechanical_ that means for instance your steering
| wheel can auto-steer BUT with (more than) a bit of force you can
| steer it mechanically even if automation completely fail. Similar
| the break pedal have some servo systems but still partially work
| in mechanical forms, so might became very hard to push but still
| able to break a bit.
|
| The most dangerous common design I know are:
|
| - impossibility to turn off certain ADAS who might act really
| badly in certain weather condition, like the classic ABS on icy
| roads;
|
| - automatic doors lock when car move, NO DAMN WAYS to unlock them
| while the car still moving;
|
| - manual parking break disappeared so a kind of emergency
| breaking ALSO usable by a passenger (for instance if the driver
| fell ill suddenly) ABSENT and no electronic replacement either
| since the electronic one if present refuse to engage if the car
| is moving;
|
| - cockpit design that makes very hard/slow for a passenger to
| push the driver feet out of accelerator etc if he/she fell ill
| suddenly.
|
| I consider the above as a sign of VERY BAD design, so I doubt
| those who made it can be trusted for anything else in safety
| terms...
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I'm way more worried about having a wreck while distracted by
| some horrible touchscreen interface than I am about a bug causing
| a wreck.
|
| When will auto companies wake up and realize that physical
| controls are better in every way?
| w_t_payne wrote:
| The problem is mostly a cultural one.
|
| In my personal experience, the automotive industry has a problem
| with aggression and dishonesty, both of which seem to go hand-in-
| hand.
|
| Both of these cultural traits tend to have a negative impact on
| quality and safety.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| I don't think it is bugs which worries you, but rather the
| completely wrong concept of modern day car production. Almost all
| cars built in the past 20-years have 0 compliance with the laws
| of physics, being extremely front-heavy and with transversely-
| mounted engines - disbalanced even on the Y-axis. What keeps them
| from spinning is the so-called DSC/ESC/ESP which is basically a
| neural network. We all know how reliable those are. It is in fact
| a very similar situation to the 737 Max, just on wheels.
|
| Due to regulations you will not be able to find a non-veteran
| vehicle without those systems, nor you'd want to, but BMW,
| Mercedes, Subaru and Lexus still have models which are well
| balanced and don't rely on those to such a heavy degree. This
| would be my advise as well.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not against (almost) perfectly deterministic
| safety systems such as ABS. On the contrary - I consider them to
| be a massive advantage or almost mandatory.
| jimbomins wrote:
| You're kidding if you think the premium brands you list don't
| have massive dependence on software systems. The basic physics
| is, as you say, better because they've kept mass distribution
| in line with how it was.
|
| And how about the additional failure mode for say BMW. It's
| modern controllers have all the software for all the features
| in, just disabled unless you pay more. So a theoretic
| sophisticated attack could throw all sorts of crap into
| operation.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Most BMWs have nearly perfect 50/50 weight balance between
| front and rear axles.
|
| Generally speaking, most sportier cars have better handling and
| better weight distribution and are in fact regularly driven
| with DSC disabled (on racing track etc)
| kylecordes wrote:
| I don't have numbers in front of me, but my impression is that
| carmakers have done a much better job in the last decade with
| front-rear balance decent on nearly all cars. Versus decades
| past when some were wildly front-heavy (or occasionally, wildly
| back-heavy, ouch).
| weakfortress wrote:
| A long time ago I attended a DEFCON where this was discussed.
| Long before it became a big deal in the industry to have all this
| tech in cars. CANBUS was broken reliably, and if my memory serves
| me they even had a car you could take a shot at hacking yourself.
| After playing with it the entire conference I came to the
| conclusion I would never own a modern car if I can avoid it.
|
| Any car running CANBUS is vulnerable to a potentially fatal
| attack. They have not resolved this. However, you also generally
| cannot avoid it. Even the base model Honda civic is vulnerable to
| attacks on the drive-by-wire system. In a less morbid sense, most
| modern cars cannot even be serviced at home without going to the
| dealer for a reset of whatever subsystem. ABS comes to mind.
|
| I would not detract from an old car. A car 25 years old has 99%
| of the safety features of a modern car and, in good working
| order, will protect you just the same. Or maybe I just don't
| worry about it because the probability of anything greater than a
| minor fender bender killing you is pretty high even with modern
| tech.
| vel0city wrote:
| > CANBUS was broken reliably
|
| So can my brake or fuel lines, if you're needing physical
| access. Get this, the door locks aren't even 100% secure,
| there's this whole thing that side steps them called "Windows".
|
| I do lament not being able to fully flush my brakes at home and
| do wish the programming harness would be freely available to
| override the system and have the ABS clear the lines. However,
| I wouldn't for a second choose to not have ABS on any vehicle I
| own, including my motorcycle.
| Tomte wrote:
| > Any car running CANBUS is vulnerable to a potentially fatal
| attack.
|
| No, it isn't. CANBUS is a non-safe protocol ("black channel" in
| safety parlance) and if anything safety-relevant is sent over
| it, there is a safety protocol on top.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Black channel schemes are not resistant to malicious input
| unless security was intentionally built in. Safety and
| security are separate (but related) concerns. Besides, white
| channel is still (unfortunately) a thing in some parts of the
| industry.
| wolrah wrote:
| > CANBUS was broken reliably, and if my memory serves me they
| even had a car you could take a shot at hacking yourself.
|
| This statement shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how
| automotive computer networks operate.
|
| The CAN bus is just a network. It's an industrial control
| protocol that's been adopted by the automotive world. It
| doesn't offer security by design, it's intended for use in
| limited environments where all hardware on the network is known
| and trusted. CAN provides methods for prioritization of
| devices, that's it. Any security is left to higher layers of
| the stack.
|
| There is no such thing as "breaking" CAN, you just physically
| connect to the network and you're able to talk to whatever
| controllers are on that network (most modern cars have multiple
| CAN buses connected to different subsets of the vehicle
| systems). At that point it's about the security features
| implemented by the devices on the network.
|
| > Any car running CANBUS is vulnerable to a potentially fatal
| attack. They have not resolved this.
|
| There is nothing to resolve at the network level. To put it
| another way, almost every computer that's ever been hacked over
| the internet was running Ethernet but that's just as irrelevant
| as CAN in cars.
|
| If you are able to physically connect to the network, you can
| talk to and potentially spoof devices on the network.
|
| > A car 25 years old has 99% of the safety features of a modern
| car and, in good working order, will protect you just the same.
|
| You couldn't possibly be more wrong. Pick your favorite vehicle
| from 1997 and look up the crash test videos, then compare
| against a similar recent model.
|
| Here's the most popular vehicle sold in the US, the Ford F-150,
| from 1997 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i5EmJBaGeQ) versus
| one from 2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cou88zi4pMY).
| You tell me which one you'd rather be in.
|
| You might say, correctly, that the 1997 F-150 is particularly
| bad, but here you can see a 1997 Volvo V70 versus a 2009 Volvo
| V70 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msnJK0ce-VM). Volvo has a
| reputation for building some of the safest vehicles on the
| road, and even those twelve years show substantial gains in
| crash performance where the older car's passenger compartment
| is clearly compromised while the newer one's crumple zones work
| as intended.
|
| > Or maybe I just don't worry about it because the probability
| of anything greater than a minor fender bender killing you is
| pretty high even with modern tech.
|
| Again, absolutely wrong. I say this as someone who's flipped a
| truck off the road at highway speed and walked away with minor
| abrasions and bruising from the seatbelt and a few cuts from
| broken glass as the rest of the truck got ruined but the cab
| stayed intact. My anecdote is of course statistically
| meaningless, but the data agrees. Crash fatality rates have
| consistently trended downward from the '80s until 2020. The
| main reason modern vehicles have gained so much exterior size
| without gaining nearly as much interior size is all the space
| taken up by modern safety equipment, crumple zones, etc.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| When it comes to potentially fatal attacks on my car, I'm a lot
| more worried about drunk drivers than CANBUS.
| vel0city wrote:
| In which case, having a more modern car with better safety
| designs is way better than not having a CANBUS.
|
| And I definitely agree; I'm way more likely to be harmed
| because of a drunk driver or someone running a red because
| they're just too busy to bother stopping at this light today
| rather than some hacker remoting into my car to change the
| car from drive to neutral or remotely disable ABS or
| something like that.
| kube-system wrote:
| Pre-CANBUS cars were even easier to exploit. Much of everything
| on those systems were in plaintext, and could be easily
| tinkered with. A 25 year old car may have many of the same
| safety systems (although it is definitely missing a few), but
| the passive safety systems that do exist are most certainly not
| to the same standard as today's vehicles. To put it plainly,
| you are _way_ more likely to die because the safety cage
| collapses on your late 90 's vehicle, than you are to die
| because someone attacked the CANBUS of your vehicle.
|
| DEFCON has a lot of great security demos, but don't mistake any
| of those demos as representative of the real-world landscape of
| issues.
| jimbomins wrote:
| That's not strictly fair. The problem is that the critical
| systems were moved to share transport on the main hub with
| infotainment (safe, I did modelling of the messages for Volvo
| way back). On that hub is wireless access. Cars have been using
| CANBUS way longer than that issue entering play and without
| physical access you wouldn't be able to hack them and with
| physical access you could easily tamper with brakes or other
| systems.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Dealerships routinely violate CANbus isolation with junky
| "add-ons" full of security holes and wireless interfaces
| directly attached to important buses. Every single
| manufacturer that cares at all about bus integrity should be
| doing message signing and that's where CANBus simply doesn't
| work. The bandwidth is far too low for good schemes (leading
| to custom implementations) and there are no decent standards
| for hardware vendors to implement, which means more of the
| already-limited CPU budget has to be allocated to it.
| vel0city wrote:
| Your link of Sudden unintended acceleration contains a lot of
| entries related to this issue which don't involve computers at
| all. It lists pedal misapplication, entrapped pedals, stuck
| throttles, electrical shorts, and diesel engine runaway as other
| things which can cause such an issue. A lot of the reported
| incidents had nothing to do with software.
|
| Either way, if you've had a fuel injected car you were still
| exposed to these issues. You would have to go buy a carbureted
| engine from the 80s or before to get away from these "unintended
| acceleration" issues, as in the end a car with EFI probably has a
| computer actually controlling the injection. I'd be way more wary
| of daily driving an 80s or older car from a general safety
| standpoint than a software issue. You're way more likely to be
| t-boned at an intersection than a software glitch causing an
| accident; having a much more modern car will help from a crash
| safety standpoint than having a carburetor.
|
| There's a ton of things that can go wrong in a car which can
| cause an accident. The software stack is surely one of those
| things, but even a 100% mechanical car can have a lot of failures
| as well. Ever have vacuum hoses fail on an old car? Carburetors
| get stuck or clogged? Personally, I'd prefer a computer
| controlling components directly instead of tons of vacuum lines
| and springs trying to keep things tuned right. On top of that
| I'll also get much better efficiency and reduce harmful emissions
| which hurt my family and my neighbors.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Most EFI still has a mechanical throttle, so if there is a
| glitch in the EFI it can't possibly cause unintended
| acceleration. Only fairly new cars now have electronic throttle
| that could potentially accelerate the engine due to a software
| glitch.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| My early-2000s Japanese car was throttle-by-wire.
| kube-system wrote:
| "Most" may vary by locale at this point. At least here in the
| US, automakers started migrating to throttle-by-wire in the
| 00s.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Either way, if you 've had a fuel injected car you were still
| exposed to these issues. You would have to go buy a carbureted
| engine from the 80s or before to get away from these
| "unintended acceleration" issues, as in the end a car with EFI
| probably has a computer actually controlling the injection._
|
| Even with EFI, if the throttle is mechanical and the EFI
| continues to ask for more fuel for whatever reason (or a fuel
| injector gets stuck open), all that will happen is the engine
| will stall due to the excessively rich mixture.
|
| _Ever have vacuum hoses fail on an old car? Carburetors get
| stuck or clogged?_
|
| The normal failure mode of a carburetor leads to an engine that
| doesn't run, and not the opposite. Before complete failure, you
| will notice a performance decline.
|
| Personally, I prefer no computer control.
|
| _On top of that I 'll also get much better efficiency and
| reduce harmful emissions which hurt my family and my neighbors_
|
| You can get a lot better efficiency from a carbureted engine
| than most people think.
|
| As for safety, I'd rather have freedom.
| vel0city wrote:
| > if the throttle is mechanical
|
| _If_ the throttle is mechanical. So yeah, I guess there 's a
| window of time there where EFI became the norm but before
| throttles were also electronic, so late 80s to early 2000s. I
| imagine the majority of cars on the road today in the US are
| fully electronic.
|
| > The normal failure mode of a carburetor leads to an engine
| that doesn't run, and not the opposite.
|
| I've personally experienced carburetors getting stuck open,
| usually on abused/unmaintained lawn equipment. I do agree the
| usual failure is that it gets gummed up and inefficient in
| its atomization, but a stuck open carb isn't impossible.
| Either way, a carb that fails and you suddenly lose power can
| also cause problems when unexpected.
|
| > You can get a lot better efficiency from a carbureted
| engine than most people think.
|
| Yeah, a well-tuned and well-maintained carburetor isn't
| absolutely horrific in efficiency. But it'll still _pale_ in
| comparison to the combustion efficiency that can be had in a
| GDI engine.
|
| > As for safety, I'd rather have freedom.
|
| Cool, and feel free to drive that freedom car in your freedom
| yard. Please keep your freedom emissions in your freedom air
| though instead of polluting your neighbors. When you're
| driving on the public streets there's more than just you out
| there.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Cool, and feel free to drive that freedom car in your
| freedom yard. Please keep your freedom emissions in your
| freedom air though instead of polluting your neighbors.
| When you 're driving on the public streets there's more
| than just you out there._
|
| Freedom includes doing things that others don't like ---
| and tolerating the opposite too. Otherwise you're just
| encouraging an authoritarian socialist dystopia.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Freedom includes doing things that others don't like
| --- and tolerating the opposite too.
|
| So I should tolerate people driving on public streets
| without insurance and without a license? I should
| tolerate people driving the wrong way on the highway? I
| should tolerate whatever emissions come from the tailpipe
| of someone's car? I should tolerate sompeone driving a
| car that nobody has touched the brakes on for a decade
| and they're about ready to fail at any moment? I should
| tolerate people driving at night without headlights on? I
| should tolerate people driving at any blood alcohol
| level?
|
| All of these are laws which limit freedom in the name of
| safety. You're arguing you'd prefer freedom over safety.
| Personally, I prefer all of these tradeoffs of freedom
| over safety, at least when driving on public streets. If
| you don't like these regulations, don't drive on public
| streets.
|
| Requiring a driver's license, having emissions controls,
| creating traffic standards for driving on public streets
| are examples authoritarian socialist dystopia I guess.
| gzer0 wrote:
| Carbureted engines are significantly less fuel efficient than
| modern engines that use fuel injection systems. They're less
| precise; often times not able to fully burn all the fuel
| supplied.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >There's a ton of things that can go wrong in a car which can
| cause an accident.
|
| And pretty much none of them ever do if the driver doesn't
| react exceptionally poorly. Even the spectacular stuff that the
| internet absolutely loves to hand wring about, like a wheel
| falling off for whatever reason, almost always results in the
| car coming to a controlled stop on the side of the road. The
| conversion rate between "failures" and "meaningful harm to
| anyone or anything is abysmal."
| vel0city wrote:
| Agreed. The biggest component failure leading to injuries is
| by far the one in the driver's seat.
| kube-system wrote:
| That's true now, because most of the critical systems have
| redundancy. I wouldn't want to drive a vehicle with one brake
| circuit and no throttle return spring, though. It has been a
| very long time since that was the case, but those days are
| probably where the mechanical failure horror stories come
| from.
| kube-system wrote:
| > It lists pedal misapplication, entrapped pedals, stuck
| throttles, electrical shorts, and diesel engine runaway as
| other things which can cause such an issue.
|
| And modern cars are much better at handling these types of
| scenarios. For example, in my late model car, if you apply the
| accelerator and brake at the same time, the vehicle will ignore
| the accelerator input. This solves two potential problems from
| the past: someone accidentally stomping on both pedals when
| they meant to hit the brake, and a foreign object wedging the
| accelerator pedal down.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| > _someone accidentally stomping on both pedals when they
| meant to hit the brake_
|
| This happens to me (sometimes) in parking lots where
| pedestrians walk between cars. Mine (2019 Mazda Miata) does
| not do this, instead I get an engine rev while standing half
| on brakes, half on accelerator, full on clutch. I end up
| feeling embarrassed as I tend to get glared at by the
| pedestrian ( _no, I did not intentionally rev it to scare
| you_ ).
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm glad that's not the behavior on a manual Miata, that
| would totally kill the prospects of heel-toe downshifting.
| ;)
| smolder wrote:
| > Either way, if you've had a fuel injected car you were still
| exposed to these issues.
|
| I don't think unintended acceleration with cable operated
| throttles was ever much of an issue. The simpler EFI systems of
| the 80s and 90s were very robust with predictable failure
| modes. We've certainly bought a lot in terms of safety and
| efficiency with the newer designs, but their complexity also
| means problems can be more obscure and more likely to sneak
| their way to market.
|
| Anecdote: My 01 Volvo had weird/dangerous intermittent
| acceleration, but had a fully computerized throttle. The
| software got confused by a failing throttle position sensor.
| The best fix is to replace it with a hall effect sensor that
| doesn't wear out.
| londonReed wrote:
| As long as you're not buying a Tesla/other "self driving car",
| you will not be the cause of an accident due to automobile
| software.
| izzydata wrote:
| All of that firmware that isn't a self driving autopilot blackbox
| is probably quite safe. Such as anti-lock breaks and fuel
| injection timing.
|
| I am never going to put my life in the hands of some software
| doing image analysis using machine learning.
| notdonspaulding wrote:
| > I am never going to put my life in the hands of some software
| doing image analysis using machine learning.
|
| Well...on your car, at least. I'm not sure how comforting that
| approach is when you're surrounded on the interstate by Tesla
| "FSD"s.
| filoleg wrote:
| Ironically, I feel at much more ease driving surrounded by
| Tesla "FSD"s, as opposed to being surrounded by average
| Seattle drivers. At least FSD always uses turn signals when
| switching lanes and is way more cautious (while still
| remaining reasonable).
|
| Back when I spent a full year commuting to work daily on a
| motorcycle, Teslas with "FSD" were the least of my worries.
| All while people who sharply switched into my lane in front
| of me with no turn signals used, they ended up almost killing
| me a couple of times.
| izzydata wrote:
| I'm ok with doing a bit of defensive driving against Teslas
| or bad drivers in general.
| mcqueenjordan wrote:
| ISO 26262 is the functional safety standard that automobile
| manufacturers adhere to. Furthermore, companies with a strong
| safety culture may also have other safety controls, including
| MISRA, AUTOSAR, and others. I think reputable car companies take
| this stuff very seriously, but your concern is also well placed.
| uncletammy wrote:
| > I think reputable car companies take this stuff very
| seriously, but your concern is also well placed.
|
| I trusted Volkswagen because of their reputation. Then the news
| broke about them systematically lying and breaking the law with
| respect to engine emissions. Shortly after this came to light,
| other "reputable car companies" turned out to have been not
| trustworthy at all.
|
| Yes there are good standards in place and some companies claim
| to adhere to them but no company should be trusted on their
| word or reputation alone. The better question is what kind of
| regulatory oversight is in place to make sure those claiming to
| adhere to certain standards are actually doing so? Also, how
| much power do the regulatory organizations have in addressing
| violators?
| jimbomins wrote:
| Faking those things is a totally different state of affairs
| to safe operation. I've been out of automotive for 20 years
| but never met anyone who would compromise normal operational
| safety. Let's face it most people who work on cars love to
| drive cars. They would be putting their own and families
| lives at risk.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I've also never seen intentional compromises, but I've seen
| _unintentional_ compromises made through ignorance or lack
| of foresight plenty of times. The bigger automakers seem to
| be better at this by virtue of developed processes, but
| what I 've seen from smaller companies is terrifying.
| f1shy wrote:
| So you are oblivious to the history of Takata? Or the
| problem with the Ford Pinto, or the ignition key of GM, or
| the recursive function calls in Toyota code... just to name
| the most important that I can cite out of the top of my
| head.
| airbreather wrote:
| Functional safety standards are performance based
| standards, which means they are shades of grey rather
| than prescriptive "follow these design clauses".
|
| The designers get together and in a formal process try
| and come up with every possible adverse outcome and the
| probability it is likely to occur.
|
| They then rank and use this info to assign performance
| requirements to various safety aspects and functions.
|
| But a key part of the overarching parent IEC61508
| standard is that there is a safety lifecycle - the
| designers make their best guess but the manufacturer has
| to at regular intervals compare actual gathered data
| against the predicted design data used and adjust
| accordingly, iterating to a better place.
|
| Just like you might win the lottery first time you buy a
| ticket, under a performance based standard you might
| experience an adverse outcome in the first day of use,
| doesn't mean the design was necessarily deficient.
|
| Infinite safety takes infinite cost, which would mean no
| cars, and what would the cost of that be to society.
|
| Like I said,it's all shades of grey.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > I've been out of automotive for 20 years but never met
| anyone who would compromise normal operational safety.
|
| There is nothing to gain with not taking safety seriously,
| but fortunes to loose. Many of the software components of
| traditional automakers are built by suppliers. If a serious
| safety issue would arise and cause fatalities, the
| suppliers and the OEMs would not only have to pay enormous
| amounts in damages, they'd also need to issue recalls that
| might even pose an existential threat to the company.
| Glawen wrote:
| Iso26262 is the safety standard (a slimmed down version of
| industrial standard by the way). misra are the coding rules
| recommended to apply for these standard. Autosar is an OS
| definition to make modular SW
| embedder wrote:
| There are a number of things under the AUTOSAR umbrella, one
| of which is a set of C++ coding guidelines, akin to MISRA.
| This is what the other poster is referring to. Back when I
| worked at Tesla, we enforced a subset of MISRA rules, and at
| my current company we enforce a subset of AUTOSAR rules, but
| use none of the AUTOSAR "platform".
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Autosar is a horrible horrible standard that makes SW worse.
| I am of the oppinion that AUTOSAR based systems are _worse_
| and less safe because of it.
|
| The API itself is decent but the configuration and the
| ecosystem is a nightmare.
| addaon wrote:
| ISO 26262 is optional, and some car makers (e.g. Tesla) may
| choose not to use it directly; but in general they use another
| process that they feel provides equivalent safety properties,
| and feel so strongly enough that they're comfortable
| substantiating this in the inevitable lawsuits.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 26262 covers system failures that produce unsafety, like broken
| accelerator sensors. ISO 21448 (SOTIF) covers system failure to
| detect and respond to the environment appropriately (e.g. does
| the radar detect small children?), which is also a common
| concern for people in my experience.
|
| Both are _acceptable_ standards, but ISO 26262 is a behemoth of
| a standard that most people have never read. Many companies don
| 't even make the full standard available to their development
| teams, let alone educate people to employ it effectively.
| Similarly, MISRA is fine in theory, but the practical usage
| often ends with running code through an automatic checker that
| can only detect half the rules.
| jimbomins wrote:
| I've been out of automotive safety critical software (engine,
| brake, controllers, etc...) but still have friends in it.
| Proper best practice is still followed by the likes of Toyota,
| Jaguar and Ford as the ones I've had experience in. That means
| the coding standards mentioned. Full
| requirements->design->implementation with functional unit
| testing, module unit testing and system testing including using
| simulators. Multiple people doing reviews, strict standards
| enforcement. Static analysis and code test coverage aiming for
| 100% path coverage with testing even when I was doing it. With
| staff typically staying on projects for the full 5 years of
| development.
|
| Ford as one I can speak about with knowledge took seriously the
| cost of recalls versus catching issues in testing. It's
| massively cheaper to spend money up front to do full process
| and catch every bug you can than to cover recall costs to
| update later not even considering liabilities if anything does
| go pop.
|
| Mistakes of course happen. But they're also rarely working from
| scratch.
|
| It makes working in modern ways horrific seeing the shoddy shit
| tossed out to meet consumer gadget deadlines.
| Glawen wrote:
| Strange you mention Toyota as manufacturer, as they are the
| one who fucked up with the unintended acceleration issue
| mentioned earlier. The thing is that they "forgot" to
| implement the mechanism which ignore gas pedal when both
| brake and gas pedal are pressed. This was a recommended
| safety feature for accelerator by wire implementation (egas
| norm).
|
| Then a few years later they got hit again with one of their
| suppliers: Takata's killing airbags
| owalt wrote:
| It's worth noting that ISO 26262 is mostly concerned with
| preventing faults due to system failure, e.g. spurious hardware
| faults, hardware degradation over time, etc. As an example, it
| doesn't have much to say about preventing a child from being
| misclassified as a bollard. It's a quite robust standard, and
| one most auto makers (certainly the European ones) have spent a
| lot of effort processing and following for quite some time now
| (in my limited experience).
|
| There's a separate standard (ISO 21448) trying to address
| issues with safety of intent, i.e. maintaining safety when
| there's no actual fault in the system. (Like the
| misclassification example.) This one's newer, much less effort
| has been spent developing it, and even less has been spent
| trying to follow it. Frankly it doesn't have as much to say.
| (And how could it? Nobody knows how to solve general
| classification problems, and especially not with something
| running on some 20 W max control unit.) This part of the
| problem space is basically the wild west. Some auto makers do a
| good effort trying to create safe solutions. Others not so
| much.
|
| In summary, some of the electronics solutions in the car can
| probably be trusted to do what they're meant to (e.g. airbags).
| Others (e.g. lane keeping assist, emergency braking) are still
| still mostly be safe but certainly warrant keeping your hands
| on the wheel. Anything approaching fully self driving is at
| best quite dubious at this point though.
| slt2021 wrote:
| There is a risk of automobile security. Nowadays cars have vast
| attack surface and uplink accesses directly into internal car's
| CAN/Ethernet bus: OBD-II port, bluetooth, GSM/5G, WiFI, NFC,
| access via OEM's web portal (these are big piles of unsecure
| code), via mobile app API, dealer network applications.
|
| Plus OEMs have a vast parts and software supply chain that can be
| compromised.
|
| I suspect that in couple years timeframe we can see massive
| incident, like ransomware, that will disable entire fleet of a
| single OEM globally. Like imagine all Mercedes around the world
| to just stop operating - these kind of incidents
| Throw4949 wrote:
| [dead]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I am scared of the infotainment system myself as it could
| distract you to death. That goes for cell phone and tablet and
| the stick-on GPS which gets confused in the most complex urban
| areas, falls into your lap when the suction cup fails, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My big complaint is with the transition of controls from
| dedicated, tactile knobs, switches, and levers to touch-screen
| buttons or menus which demand more visual attention (i.e.
| distraction from driving) to operate.
| mikehodgson wrote:
| Mazda did the research, and transitioned back to real tactile
| controls in 2019. I expect more automakers will be or are
| already following their lead.
|
| https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
| pur...
| ptmcc wrote:
| I love Mazda for resisting the touchscreen-everything car
| interior. Everything in my 2021 CX-5 is physical buttons
| and knobs. The design and ergonomics are just fantastically
| nice and usable.
|
| Like you said, the infotainment is also not a touchscreen
| and is rotary control only. While not as immediately
| intuitive as a touchscreen, once you get the hang of it it
| is much safer and more accurate to use while driving.
| Trying to use a touchscreen while moving is just awful.
|
| And I don't think it is wise to optimize short term
| intuitiveness over long term safety and usability for a
| vehicle I will own for several years.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I have a 2016 Mazda and they had tactile controls then.
| What they did in 2019 was remove the touch screen feature
| on the center display, but there were always tactile
| controls to access the display. I have a 2022 Mazda and
| it's largely the same interface as the 2016 controls.
| izzydata wrote:
| This is my least favorite trend in new cars. If there aren't
| any new cars in 10 years that aren't just a giant screen in
| the center then I guess I'm going to be walking.
|
| You can make a modern electric vehicle with actual buttons
| and dials. There is nothing about a car not having a gas
| motor that requires every tiny bit of functionality being
| controlled by a touch tablet. If anything it just seems like
| laziness in car design.
| jimbomins wrote:
| You may get your wish. Recent research has shown that real
| knobs and switches are much less of a driver distraction than
| trying to fiddle with screens or get voice commands correct.
| The two either mean you look away from the driving because
| you can't just feel your way across a screen like physical
| controls or you add cognitive load whilst thinking and
| talking.
|
| I'm with you and hope all the idiot touch screen crap is
| ditched.
| vel0city wrote:
| > I'm with you and hope all the idiot touch screen crap is
| ditched.
|
| I agree many manufacturers have gone a bit overboard in
| making even things like vent positions and glove boxes
| behind touchscreens. But at the same time, I don't want
| touch screen to completely disappear. Punching in a
| destination and controlling the navigation interface is way
| better with a touchscreen than using a dial. As a passenger
| or while stopped, changing the media with a touchscreen
| interface is better than a dial. Changing a lot of the
| finer settings in the car (ones you wouldn't be doing while
| driving) with a touchscreen is better than scrolling
| through menus with a dial. For the most part, a lot of
| things you'd do with the system while _not moving_ or while
| being the passenger _can_ be better on the screen than with
| a bunch of physical controls, controls which would
| necessitate making the screen _a lot_ smaller.
|
| Also, then when wanting to quickly reference the navigation
| system, having a larger screen with larger items on it
| means it is easier to understand what it is telling the
| driver in a glance. Having a ton of physical controls means
| it is a much smaller map, meaning smaller items on the map,
| meaning harder to understand at a quick glance. It's nice
| having the next turn up in the driver's information cluster
| or on a heads-up display as well to reduce the needs for
| the driver to reference the larger navigation system.
|
| There definitely needs to be a balance of physical controls
| versus software buttons, but I wouldn't buy a new car
| _without_ a screen these days.
| twiddling wrote:
| Muscle memory to know that the third button in past the
| volume knob turns on the windshield defroster, vs. looking
| at a menu on a screen whilst driving...
| amelius wrote:
| Normally, cars require certification to be allowed on public
| roads. My main problem with software in automobiles is that
| vendors can _change_ my car even without any certification agency
| involved in the process.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| So the answer is yes, and no.
|
| > https://illmatics.com/carhacking.html
|
| is a good starting point. But there are a bunch of buses on a
| modern car, some of them are critical, some less so. Some are
| firewalled off, others are open.
|
| As you know you can get access to a lot of the car's inner
| workings by plugging into the ODB2 port. Its perfectly possible
| to brick some cars by fuzzing the ODB2 port.
|
| In principle, most things in cars _should_ fail safe. even if
| they are electric or talking over a bus of somesort.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Thoughts from my wife who has worked in electrical and software
| for OEM automakers (high volume, luxury sport and start up) for
| 10 years: (I'm typing while she is, ironically, driving our
| Volvo)
|
| To answer your last question first, buy a car that hasn't been
| launched within the last 12 to 18 months. That's not software
| specific, that general vehicle safety across the board as they
| will be working through the initial warranty issues. So if you
| are looking at second hand and you know model ABC was launched
| 2016, don't buy one made in the 2016/2017 period.
|
| ISO 26262 rates every system on a critically rating, if they have
| a ASIL rating of C or D they have multiple back up systems in
| place. This falls under functional safety which is a newer (5
| years or so) area targeting that cars are now highly complex
| interconnect systems linked with software - the idea being that
| you target specific subsystems to make sure their function isn't
| totally taken out due to some failure or error in the wider
| system.
|
| Cyber security wise there is an EU reg coming in from 2024 making
| sure that OTA updates are safe, reducing hacking attack vectors
| and the like. This is being introduced to new cars and designs as
| a result of the issues cited above.
|
| As far as people hacking in via the infotainment to access the
| car control systems - there are firewalls between infotainment
| and primary car control to mitigate against that issue. There
| multiple networks in a single vehicle to isolate systems so that
| no one central unimportant system (infotainment for eg) can take
| out the whole vehicle.
|
| Software in cars to this level is new, it's evolving and it takes
| 7 or so years to create a new platform. This means there is a lag
| in the system, especially during this transitionary period.
|
| However car makers take this stuff incredibly seriously and their
| software teams are absolutely not run in the same way as a lower
| consequence dev situation. Lives are on the line and the type of
| devs who work in this field know that.
|
| Nothing is perfect but the safety downsides of an old car are
| widely considered to be far greater than the threat of hacking or
| bad code in a new car.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Nothing is perfect but the safety downsides of an old car are
| widely considered to be far greater than the threat of hacking
| or bad code in a new car._
|
| "widely considered" by the same industry who would love to sell
| you a new car...
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Follow up to this:
|
| The one thing that could cause a lot of problems for cars and
| software is Agile/Scrum.
|
| The projects that are being run in this, new for the industry
| way, are always late and people hate working on them.
|
| CEOs and other C suite people see the massively shorter lead
| times that software can offer and are getting greedy. They
| saved a year or more of time on a feature thanks to code and
| over the air and then they decide they want it made in 4 weeks,
| when 3 months would be prudent.
|
| There's something about the intangibility of software that
| makes traditional automotive people's brains break.
|
| Thankfully many rank and file engineers and PMs in OEMs are
| pushing back against Scrum etc so a more pragmatic layer of
| management will come up in the coming years. Sadly Agile/Scrum
| will cause some preventable issues in the meantime.
|
| Unlikely to be safety critical stuff due to the rounds of QA
| and safety council sign offs and gateways they need to go
| through. But less safety critical stuff may slip through.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > There's something about the intangibility of software
|
| actually I see this break most managers' brains. In my
| experience it's been a constant pressuring to reduce scope
| such that the plans of the incompetent tend to be selected
| over those who know how to build great software with all the
| non-functional requirements in place (security, reliability,
| operability, modularity/flexibility etc) .
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The one thing that could cause a lot of problems for cars
| and software is Agile/Scrum.
|
| Nobody in the industry is doing Agile for safety critical
| systems. The development standards are getting such that
| writing automotive software is not fun any more, but that is
| the correct way to go.
|
| Want to electronically open the frunk on an EV? That piece of
| hardware and software has a surprising level of safety
| concern. Because inadvertently opening the latch can kill
| someone.
|
| You are correct to be concerned, but the industry is very
| much on top of things.
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