I have made quite a few stupid mistakes in my time, and I suspect advancing years may make me even more vulnerable to adding to the tally... A favoured one liner of mine is "The man who never made a mistake, never made ANYTHING."
My chosen forum name suggests that new tec kinda frustrates me, perhaps more than most as I was involved in ensuring the serviceability of quite a wide variety of it over a few decades as it "advanced" with the passage of time.
With the benefit of hindsight it can be quite amazing to discover quite how the mix of "stupid mistakes" and human nature can create a very unfortunate set of circumstances..? Need I point to the Post Office situation which captured the imagination of the populace, though was also known of for years by those who thought it in their best interests to act as they did at all levels in the system.. as human nature tends to dictate..?
However as we are discussing vehicles and as Landrover entered the fray.... Imagine all those sensors, programming and actuaters allowing a situation where someone driving an automatic Evoque might stop the car in a car park on a slope, and been distracted by the loud exhaust in a car parked next to them and no doubt with other things in their mind... Forgets to press the button to stop the engine, which if pressed automatically puts the gearbox in park.... Stupid person or what...? This mistake then followed by getting out of the car, no doubt the programming will have sounded a warning (?) but perhaps the overly loud exhaust of the other car parked alongside masked that alarm... The driver wanders off to the ticket machine and on walking back to the car becomes aware that the engine is still running... and as the passenger door is the one nearest, it is opened and the engine stop/start button is pressed....BIG MISTAKE.... The engine shuts down, the car begins to roll backwards as it takes time for the action of the gearbox control system to to switch from drive into park, Things get worse from that point on as the car travelled perhaps seven meters before it crashed into another parked car....
I was not present at the time the accident happened, but for me it seems there was perhaps a considerable flaw in the vehicles programming that could allow that very unfortunate sequence of events to occur...?
On the other hand were the vehicle one such that had an ignition key that had to be physically removed, a handbrake which required to be operated manually and a lever to select either drive, reverse or park.... I suspect the accident might never have occurred..?
I do admit to enjoying some aspects of my Tesla`s digital programming and flexibility, but then it seems Musk employed NASA staff who were being made redundant, as the space programme was being cut back at the time he wanted to build a battery operated vehicle from the ground up.....As for my trust in Landrover in terms or indeed many others in terms of programming.... Hmm....?
