Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Appalled!

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....?

Mine is "Is it possible to learn anything from success?"

gmg

I guess it depends on how you got there! 🙂

K

As we are drifting, here is a favourite of mine.

“He Who Knows And Knows That He Knows Is A Wise Man - Follow Him;
He Who Knows Not And Knows Not That He Knows Not Is A Fool - Shun Him”
― Confucius, The Analects

There are three types of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then, when you criticise him, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

ECU and system updates used to be done by connecting a computer (or specialised diagnostic system) to a car and running the actual update locally. Apparently now it is all done over the internet.

When the Evoque had only been released for a month or two there was a major firmware upgra. the son of one of our neighbours took his Evoque in for the update and was told that he would have to leave it for a full day. Apparently, perhaps because of slow internet speeds, the update was not finished by the end of the work day so they had to leave everything connected. The normal practice was to shut off all power to the workshop but in this case they had to leave the power on for the computer connections etc. At some point the company accountant came past the workshop and saw that the power had been left on so he pulled the main switch. The next day when the workshop staff arrived they discovered that the power had been lost at a critical moment and that there was nothing they could do to restore the system. Because of multiple ECUs in the system that were all interdependent there was nothing they could do locally and the car had to go back to the factory.

The moral of the story is that our neighbour's son finished up with a replacement brand new Evoque at no cost to him all because of a bungled update.

That is the way I was told the story and I have no idea how correct it was. Whatever the case for some reason the son was given a brand new replacement vehicle.

I am not a fan of electric handbrakes as I had one deploy at 50mph in a job Disco, fortunately without incident. Another in a brand new Vauxhall Insignia which I left parked on a steep driveway while doing a call on, the handbrake let go and the car proceeded down the drive backwards across the lane into a tree causing considerable damage, fortunately the Boss was with me and witnessed it was not my fault. We had several similar incidents with those cars.

Also

There are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand Binary and those that don't.

An average man only learns from his mistakes, a wise man learn from other peoples mistakes, whilea n idiot doesn't even learn from their own mistakes.

I don't like the electric handbrake in the Mitsubishi Outlander, it just feels odd and doesn't feel like it is holding the car, same as Park, it doesn't feel like it is doing anything but so far luckily no incidents from failures.

Thanks for the replies on programming issues guys. Quite by chance the Tesla app on my phone advised me that there was a programming update available yesterday, all of which could be achieved via my phone and home wi-fi... Job done. In circa 10 months of my Tesla ownership I have updated the software in this manner quite a few times. My niece bought a new Taycan on which for it`s software to be updated, and required to spend the day in the dealership workshop.. Seems Tesla may be well ahead of the rest, even the imagined best of the rest..?

Reading that opening the door on a vehicle might shut off the engine or whatever is an interesting insight into the possible thinking of the team responsible for programming the vehicle.

In the case of the accident I described... It would seem there may have been multiple sensor inputs available to the PLC/ECU to determine that the driver was not present in a situation where it seems the engine was left running in drive holding the Evoque on a slope...?

Seat belt not engaged, drivers door opened, drivers door closed, passenger door opened, engine start/stop button pressed, passenger door not closed....

All of which it seems caused the engine to engage shut down programming sequence, part of which shut the engine down, while rotating the gear selection knob to round into the park position to attempt to lock the gearbox in park, the last part of which I suspect was not possible as it seems likely that the car had started moving backwards down the slope as soon as the engine stopped...thus the gears in the box would be rotating and the mechanical locking process would likely be restricted in completing the task of locking the gears..? I do not know of the actual operation within the gearbox though I suspect I may not be too far off in my assumption...?

But if aircraft can fall out of the sky as the result of either flawed or corrupted programming... I guess a car accident may be regarded as collateral damage in the drive towards... whatever..?

In this particular case, two broken legs, two cars damaged, and all that followed on from there....

I recently scrapped my VW beetle as the cost of replacing the failed ECU ( which wasn't available anyway, "it's an old car Sir" 2008 ) was more than it's value however I can get parts for my 1955 XK140 over the phone for next day delivery. It will be a cold day in hell when I consider buying a new car, the Bus Pass and Rail cards will get a good thrashing instead.