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Software Transportation Hardware

Fiat Chrysler Recalls 1.3 Million Ram Pickups For Fatal Software Problem (cnn.com) 101

Posted by BeauHD from the better-safe-than-sorry dept.
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.
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Fiat Chrysler Recalls 1.3 Million Ram Pickups For Fatal Software Problem More

Fiat Chrysler Recalls 1.3 Million Ram Pickups For Fatal Software Problem

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  • Now we have Windows for cars. If something messes up, reboot the car. I guess that's fine as long as it's not something like, I don't know - the breaks stop working and the accelerator is stuck full open. And the ignition lock is activated in the "ON" position.

    Yeah - totally can't happen, right?

    • If GM was like Microsoft... [harvard.edu] (replace GM with Fiat Chrysler or similar)

      For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

      In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press

  • Send the developers to work for Samsung- they can join the Ford Pinto engineers that worked on the Galaxy s7.
    • It was the Note 7 not the S7. If you are going to make jokes at least know what you are talking about.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Throw in the VW engineers while you are at it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by aix tom ( 902140 )

        At least VW didn't make any engineering mistakes.

        They build a car that performed as good as possible for the customer, and as good as possible for the government inquisitor. The only problem was, that the government inquisitor didn't like that the car was able to figure out it was being tested and changed it's behaviour based on that.

  • So they are using a Fail Unsafe system. If something fails, put the system in an unsafe state. Brilliant.

    Love how they say they _designed_ it to work this way. Ah, no you didn't.

    • > So they are using a Fail Unsafe system.

      How else should it fail? Stop the vehicle from running if you bottom it out?

    • Having a side airbag fire off inadvertently is probably much more unsafe than not at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      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.

    • Re:Fail unsafe (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf.ERDOSnet minus math_god> on Friday May 12, 2017 @05:33PM (#54408075)

      So they are using a Fail Unsafe system. If something fails, put the system in an unsafe state. Brilliant.

      Love how they say they _designed_ it to work this way. Ah, no you didn't.

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        So they are using a Fail Unsafe system. If something fails, put the system in an unsafe state. Brilliant.

        Love how they say they _designed_ it to work this way. Ah, no you didn't.

        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.

        That is utter bollocks.

        Children are not banned from the front seat, there is an advisory against using rear facing child seats in the front seat.

        With almost all airbag fatalities its usually due to people putting their arms over the steering wheel (I.E. hand over hand) rather than doing push-pull steering. Its not the airbag that kills them, its their own radius or ulna that does the job. I haven't seen a car with a user accessible airbag disable switch for some time. Any switches are only there for

    • So they are using a Fail Unsafe system. If something fails, put the system in an unsafe state. Brilliant.

      Love how they say they _designed_ it to work this way. Ah, no you didn't.

      No they designed it in the safest possible way. When designing safety systems whether they be for fire and gas in buildings, nuclear power plants, or for a small FIAT you have to take into account several risky scenarios. One of those scenarios is the spurious operation of the safety system.

      Systems are designed to meet certain probability of failure requirements to reduce the risk. There's many different ways to design a reliable system and they will all have various trade-offs in complexity and also in oth

  • So young engineers imagine such safety systems should have or need a computer system? morons.

    • So yes, you're suggesting we *not* use computers to determine air bag deployment. You clearly never experienced one of the early air bag cars from the 80's...

      • Correct, air bag deployment can be done by purely mechanical inertial based systems that have superior reliability and lifespan compared to computer based ones. Yes, I know people whose lives were saved by airbag systems from the 1980s. You are not an engineer, you spew in ignorance

  • What a cluster... warning... (Score:3)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Friday May 12, 2017 @04:44PM (#54407863)

    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.

    • Can't help but notice you conspicuously didn't mention how long you continued driving the car after the idiot lights first came on...

      • Can't help but notice you conspicuously didn't mention how long you continued driving the car after the idiot lights first came on.

        After the head gasket blew and the piston broke, it was dead in the street. Workers from a nearby restaurant pushed the car out of traffic into a parking lot and I waited for a tow truck. My mechanic told me the bad news the next morning. I had it towed home to make arrangements with Pick-N-Pull. A week later it got towed to spare parts heavan.

        • For future reference call around to various wreckers in the area and see how much they'll charge to sell you a used engine and drop it in for you. You will probably be surprised just how cheaply you can get it fixed, and if you're uncomfortable with a repair done by a wrecker with used parts, it's still worth it so you can at least turn around and sell it for a lot more than the $250 Pick-N-Pull will give you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      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.

      Mechanic was lazy.

      When you blow a head gasket, you simply look for a 2nd hand replacement engine. A Ford Mondeo/Taurus uses Fords most common engines, An engine swap shouldn't be more than a days labour at the most. I once got a Nissan SR20DET completely replaced for A$2250 which included a new radiator and turbo.

      Fixing a blown head gasket is not worth is as you dont know if the rest of the engine is good until you've got the new gasket in place, but that's why you just drop a good engine in there.

      • Mechanic was lazy.

        My mechanic is highly rated in the neighborhood for being honest, which he learned from his father who ran the shop for 40 years. He doesn't think a car should be repaired if it breaks down faster than it can be fixed. No one told me about getting another engine. That's something I recently found out from a coworker.

  • WTF (Score:1)

    by Idzy ( 1549809 )

    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 are supposed to be worrying about a light on the dashboard after taking a significant hit that causes a rollover?

    • They are supposed to be worrying about a light on the dashboard after taking a significant hit that causes a rollover?

      Long before there is an accident, the system will light the AIRBAG warning light in the cluster if there is any problem detected with the airbag system such as sensor failure, missing airbag, etc. You are supposed to take your vehicle to the dealer ASAP if that light comes on, not drive around and get into accidents.

  • ... trash all the software-controlled life critical systems and put in a 5 point harness. Face it. If someone wants to maliciously hack your car, they won't just hack the brakes and steering. They'll take out the safety systems as well.

  • If we've learned anything from the number of defects that are discovered in ECUs it's that they exist and people die because of them. Cars are becoming increasingly computerized which is disturbing because they are incorporating non-vital features into ECUs which are black boxes that we are just expected to trust behave properly. What we need is standardized and open source ECUs that handle all the basic systems needed for the car to function. Car companies can keep their fancy features in a secondary mo

    • Modern ECUs are not based around your old rock solid M68000 chips at 20MHz and 64KB of software, they usually run at a minimum of 200MHz with a few megabytes for software because they run full-blown operating systems.

      I would think an M68000 based ECU would sport a Dragonball [wikipedia.org], probably the 68328.

      (the classic Palm Pilots, i.e. the Palm III, ran on this chip)

      • You forget that they need to meet automotive requirements. This requires a very wide operating temperature range as well as a coprocessor doing the computing exactly the same thing and checking if the results match. If that weren't the case then we would have approximately the same chips in our cars as we have in our smartphones.

    • 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 [nxp.com] 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 [nxp.com] or MPC55xx [nxp.com] 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 [ghs.com], WindRiver [windriver.com], ET [etas.com]

      • The top of the line MPC57xx [nxp.com] is only ranges from 32 MHz to over 300 MHz.

        Thus confirming what I wrote.

        All of which are much more reliable than the 68ks.

        68k was just an example. My point was just that they are of a significantly higher complexity.

        For OS' it's running a RTOS of some sort, not a 'full blown OS'

        I classify an RTOS as being a full-blown OS. Process switching makes it a full OS.

        Theres' no opensource compiler for the chips.
        There's no opensource RTOS for the chips.
        [...] a fully opensource everything for 2017 vehicles isn't going to happen.

        My point was that it should be a mandated requirement for vehicles. It's called regulation and thanks for making my point about how closed the systems are.

      • You are wrong on a couple of counts. GCC does support the MPC5xxx CPUs and RTEMS (rtems.org) has run on those processors for over a decade. It has been used in automotive applications. RTEMS also supports the newer qoriq CPUs with SMP support.

        • Last I checked the GCC didn't support the PPC VLE extensions, which makes it a non-starter for our use. Did that change?

          And damn, It looks like NXP has finally done something: https://community.nxp.com/thre... [nxp.com]

          RTEMS

          Has someone paid for their ISO-26262 certification? That's what holding us up. I'm trying to convince my boss that $(FOSS+Pay for the cert) $(Windriver RTOS)

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Honestly, I think the first really open system that isn't tied to a specific make and model will actually be for electric cars because they are significantly less complex. Tesla slapped on a lot of neat features that ups the complexity to new heights but the basic control system is very very simple.

  • Ask any sheep farmer what they keep a Ram on the farm for. Just to fuck the ewes.

    Whenever I see a Dodge 'Ram' on the road, I think "sheepfucker." In general usage I call any of the Dodge vehicles with the sheepfucker logo on it a "sheepfucker." In particular the burly pickup trucks whose driver is clearly compensating.

    I haven't seen a 'Sheepfucker' bumper sticker, but have toyed with the idea of creating one.

  • Risk evaluation (Score:3)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Friday May 12, 2017 @06:06PM (#54408231)

    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.

    • Why recall? Cant they just make some software injector tool for the model and sell it as stock for present and future model service workshops? IT kind of establishes a war against software engineers, and we know it may well be the ONLY ONE ABLE to actually program that software paying for the flies around who actually introduced the error out of ideology! IT is also a war against Car, car companies and maybe American cars? If Orientals do it, it must happen also in the USA? Can I have one of those useless c

  • First time I realized that "ram" doesn't mean memory.

    Second time I noticed that "pickup" had nothing to do with music or old TV equipment.

    I am very obviously not a car geek...

  • Fix it again tony!

  • "Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?"
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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