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Fiat Chrysler Recalls 1.3 Million Ram Pickups For Fatal Software Problem (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: Fiat Chrysler is recalling 1.3 million pickup trucks because of a software problem that may be tied to at least one death and two injuries. The problem could disable side airbags from deploying and seat belts from tightening in a rollover accident. If there is a significant impact on the truck's underbody, Fiat Chrysler says the truck's safety system could incorrectly conclude that a sensor underneath the truck has failed. If a sensor does fail, the truck's safety system is designed to suppress the airbags from deploying and seat belts from tightening when they are not supposed to. That's why there is a risk if there is a subsequent rollover. The good news is the driver should be alerted to this problem by a instrument cluster warning light. If the light comes on, drivers should then turn the truck off, and then turn the key back into the on/run position to verify that the light is no longer on. They should also follow instructions on their recall notice. The report notes that the affected vehicles include the 2013-16 Ram 1500 and 2500 pickups, and 2014-2016 Ram 3500 pickups.
The good news is the driver should be alerted to this problem by a instrument cluster warning light.
The last time all the lights appeared on the dashboard of my 1999 Ford Taurus the head gasket had blown and a piston broke inside engine. My mechanic refused to work on it as it was a waste of money. That was six months after I spent $1,500 on tires and brakes. Pick-N-Pull bought it for $250.
it seems pretty reasonable to me. A side airbag going off randomly is pretty disorienting (happened to me at a pothole once).
And if a warning light goes off saying the system is dead, it seems fine to me in all honesty. Not even a huge deal. Just a shorty car with a system that sucks, wouldn't be the first fiat like that.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Actually, the sudden deployment of airbags and the seatbelt tensioner would be far more unsafe than to not deploy in an accident.
Beside the startle factor, it's a fairly violent event and it's far safer that in case of problems, the airbag does NOT deploy than deploys.
It's why we have airbag disable switches, and children sets are never allowed in the front seat anymore - because deployment has the chance to cause injury.
Just interesting how we react to safety issues and recalls and have no real concept of statistics and risk evaluation. So of the 1.3 million Ram trucks on the road covered by this recall, many of which have been safely driven for several years, only 1 death has occurred because of this and 10 injuries confirmed. So that's a reliability rating of some five 9s, which fro a purely capitalistic point of view is actually well within reason and a perfectly acceptable death rate (unless of course it affects you!). Your odds of dying in a car crash despite working safety features are orders of magnitude greater than dying in a crash in a vehicle with this flaw where this flaw caused your death. So how do we evaluate the true risk and true cost?
So on the one hand a correctable flaw probably should be corrected, but on the other hand, if the odds of it happening are near zero, from a completely economic point of view it'd be far better for the companies and the economy to do nothing and let people die at the present rate. Is the latter action morally wrong? It may be. Depends on how you evaluate the risks. Forced recalls seem like a great idea because a company is forced to foot the bill and learn from it, but in reality the costs will be passed on to consumers down the road. I do wonder where this continual threat of litigation, particularly by the NTSB, is going to lead us. Might make us safer, might just make us spend more money.
they usually run at a minimum of 200MHz with a few megabytes for software because they run full-blown operating systems.
No. No. Just No.
The top of the line MPC57xx is only ranges from 32 MHz to over 300 MHz. Most of the ones that are currently in production are more than likely the MPC56xx or MPC55xx line. All of which are much more reliable than the 68ks. The highest end/safest ones run lock step cores with a 3rd core that compares the output to make sure that they're both calculating the same values.
For OS' it's running a RTOS of some sort, not a 'full blown OS'. There are a few different vendors: GreenHills, WindRiver, ETAS, etc.
For compilers it's either WindRiver's Diab or Green Hills. To my knowledge GCC doesn't work on the MPC5xxx line. I've been trying to talk my boss into sponsoring a grad student to get LLVM ported so we can at least do some prototyping without paying for a license.
And not if you're going to be using the eTPU, which requires a separate compiler.
With most of the control algorithms written in Simulink and the HAL done in C or C++.
What we need is standardized and open source ECUs that handle all the basic systems needed for the car to function.
I'll be the first in line.
So to recap:
A single small team *may* be able to make ECM for vehicles ~10+ years old but unless you have a lot of money to donate to a cause, a fully opensource everything for 2017 vehicles isn't going to happen.