Thank you for all the response

Even though my essay didn't get the blessing of 置頂, I'm very happy to see so many people thinking. As I said in my original post, my purpose was to get people thinking about the details of this "technology" because it is not nearly as simple as people have put it before my post.

I did express my own rejection of the necessity of it, but I also said that I believe both the additional failure modes and the interference with other driving technique can be solved by some smart engineering, and I believe that's exactly what will happen. I only wanted to make people think more and be more comfortable and confident about their own opinion, whichever side they end up on.

For example, ttesw spoke from his own experience and supported my comment that this system is not as simple as we thought.

tsc12's comment about the operation speed threshold is another great addition to that point. Biglow cited this obviously to support the opinion that the system can be easily engineered to not interfere with low speed off road two-footed driving. I have zero issue with that opinion.

pop3's second post talked about additional advantages of the system. It's along the same line as my point that improved stopping distance is not the main reason for this system. Solving the panic is more important in reality.

pop3's first post seems to be in the other camp too, but I'm actually extremely happy to see (and totally agree with) the way he thinks. The brake switch stuck failure mode I presented does have an incredibly small probability of occurrence. (Although it's not as small as one might think, I will explain a bit more in a different response to him.)

What I would like to encourage is a continued thinking in this direction. wolfmanii's response to pop3's comment is exactly what I was hoping people will have. Engineers have to stop at some point and say some probability is simply to low to worry about. Unfortunately, with the millions of cars sold and the infinite ways that a car can be used and misused (driver panic), eventually these things can come back and haunt a company. In my opinion, this is exactly what happened to Toyota this time.

Just imagine if pop3's comment was the last one on Nissan's design of a simple Brake Override system...20years and 50million cars later, you got one guy falling into the scenario I said, killing a 5 year old girl in the on-coming car. And he lives to tell the press that his Nissan didn't accelerate as he knows it could, and his friend who was following his car says he saw the brake light was on when he tried to accelerate. And somebody smart enough figured out that it could be a very rare combination of events that Nissan decided wouldn't happen...

Keep thinking people. Like I said, that's all I wanted _:)

所有跟帖： 

• well said! I love this forum -wolfmanii- ♂ (0 bytes) () 02/22/2010 postreply 10:56:07

• 回複：Thank you for all the response -tsc12- ♂ (448 bytes) () 02/22/2010 postreply 11:16:28