Today I found another example why my mistrust of embedded systems is justified. We have a gas convection oven with a fairly sophisticated electronic control. It has a processor that does a good job of keeping the temperature stable and that can do useful things like automatically turn the oven off when the cooking time is complete. After using the oven today, I hit the off button. The gas turned off, then the oven locked up. It was receiving power, and the LED panel was lit, but it was completely unresponsive. I had to use the circuit breaker to reboot the oven. I hope it is designed so that a failure causes the gas valve to close, but it may not.

The crashing oven is relevant to self-driving cars because they are both ubiquitous and potentially deadly systems controlled by embedded processors. If I can’t trust an oven, how much less should I trust a car?

Unfortunately, I would be completely unsurprised if we are eventually forced into self-driving cars. Besides the common unjustified technological optimism, there are the problems of well-meaning safety campaigners and of lawyers. Because the ideal driverless car is perfectly safe, as more cars begin to incorporate more bits of automated driving (eg automatic distance controls), it is likely that there will be campaigns and lawsuits to mandate these features. These will likely add up until we are forced into driverless cars.

While self-driving cars are an interesting research project with some beneficial uses, my experience in maintaining cars and in computer engineering makes me think they are a bad idea for general use. A better solution is to expand the rail system to lower the use of interstate highways, and to design cities where driving is less needed.

My old blog is here.