Gold Sinker Mk1

[white exec]

I read that Independent report with some scepticism too. Agree with Simon about brakes always being able to overcome engine power. So many things don't ring true. And how many cars actually carry a detailed event recorder, covering all those driver/vehicle functions?

[CitroJim]

You will never, ever get me in a driverless car

You're right Chris, the legalities are a minefield and will hopefully outlaw them before they have any chance to get established.

I agree the Independent report was likely a lot of 'let's not let the facts stand in the way of a good story' as many of these reports are...

[mickeymoon]

All that <spherical objects of a personal nature>

Spherical? :O

Karate has had an effect then!



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[mickeymoon]

You will never, ever get me in a driverless car

Nor me. I find it stressful enough being a passenger in one with someone else driving!

I support some level of automatic idiot-proofing and driver aids as I believe the pros outweigh the cons - ESP, airbags, ABS and so on. I'm not sold on collision avoidance yet, but I expect it will become more intelligent in the future and that can only be a good thing.



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[CitroJim]

All that <spherical objects of a personal nature>

Spherical? :O

Karate has had an effect then!

[Mandrake]

I read that Independent report with some scepticism too. Agree with Simon about brakes always being able to overcome engine power. So many things don't ring true. And how many cars actually carry a detailed event recorder, covering all those driver/vehicle functions?

Not to be macabre or disrespectful of the dead, and in the interests of reasoning and facts, I think there are only three possibilities:

1) The driver was genuinely incompetent enough to panic when the cruise control wouldn't disengage or the start button wouldn't stop the engine, and in that moment of panic it did not occur to him to press the brake pedal (not realising that the brake pedal has the final say over the engine and cruise control, through power alone, let alone safety interlocks) nor did he try the handbrake, although he did apparently ask 999 if he should use that, but didn't get a reply back in time. To be fair, if the handbrake works on the rear wheels applying the handbrake hard at over 60mph would almost certainly lock the rear wheels and cause a skid that would spin the car around and around, and end up in the ditch or flipped over but that might be preferable to plowing into a lorry!

Of course if it was an e-brake it might refuse to engage while the car was driving. (anyone know ?) If it was an older Citroen with a mechanical handbrake on the front wheels then pulling it on hard would certainly resist the acceleration and reduce the speed of the incident but wouldn't have enough power to slow the car right down against full engine power. But it would be better than nothing. So there's a strike against e-brakes and for not having the handbrake on the front!

It occurs to me as well - will the start button stop an engine in a car doing 60mph anyway - probably not, as it would kill all vacuum assist for the brakes and make the steering very heavy, especially if it was an automatic - both things that could potentially cause an accident in the first place. So I think it's likely that modern cars with start buttons will not let you stop the engine at speed as a safety feature. (anyone know ?) Of course this safety feature would then become very dangerous if the throttle got stuck down...

So his choices in the event of a serious systems failure are basically slam the foot brake on hard, something that is hopefully taught to drivers as a last defence against something like a stuck throttle..... ?

Sadly I think its most likely he may have just panicked and not tried the brakes under the mistake belief that you can't brake a car while it is accelerating...

2) Again, not to say ill of the dead but the possibility has to be considered that it was deliberate on the part of the driver - and what better way to go out knowing that your family will still get an insurance payment than a crazy high speed crash "caused" by a malfunctioning cruise control. Add in a panicked 999 call as well for extra measure to make it seem more legitimate. Sounds like a plan, except anyone half technically minded about how cars work is going to be very suspicious even though the general public would buy the story hook line and sinker. (And start fearing cruise controls...)

3) Sabotage - someone deliberately wanted to take him out, for whatever reason. The sad truth is that if someone was really determined to do so it is technically feasible. Although systems like ABS have a lot of failsafe mechanisms in both hardware and software, and are extremely unlikely to cause catastrophic failure of the foot brake, all modern cars are vulnerable to ECU hacking over the OBD-II port, as there are little or no safeguards against firmware uploads to ECU's and messages are generally sent un-encrypted and un-authenticated over the CAN bus. The CAN bus and ECU's on modern cars are 100% "security through obscurity".

So the would be assailant would only need to know the model of the car and get 10 minutes time plugged into the OBD-II port to "reprogram" certain ECU's like ABS and cruise control to act in a malicious way. The ABS ECU does have the power to disconnect all foot brake lines at once and for a prolonged period of time if reprogrammed malliciously, thus rendering the foot brake completely inoperative. A lot of modern cars especially in the US have a 3G/4G connection to systems like OnStar, and it has been shown that on such cars it is possible to even hack them remotely without requiring OBD-II access. All you need to do is find their public IP address.

Program the cruise control and ABS to both "malfunction" once 70mph is exceeded and you have an almost certain fatality...

If anyone thinks this sounds a bit fantastical, have a read of the work done by the security researcher Charlie Miller on hacking cars, including remotely in cases where the car itself has a permanent online connection. Almost anything that an ECU has control over can be tampered with from windscreen wipers to door locks to ABS to cruise control. In fact I think programming the ABS to kill the foot brake was one of the specific hacks he was able to accomplish.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=charl ... r+car+hack

From the Jeep story:

https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-r ... p-highway/

Miller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch. The researchers say they’re working on perfecting their steering control—for now they can only hijack the wheel when the Jeep is in reverse.

If someone really wants to get you this bad though, you don't stand a chance!

[Stickyfinger]

No E Brakes are fitted to the front wheels that I know of.....

[Mandrake]

No E Brakes are fitted to the front wheels that I know of.....

Sorry, I left out the word 'not' from the sentence. (I've edited the original post to fix it) What I meant to say was:

"So there's a strike against e-brakes and for not having the handbrake on the front!" meaning that a manual brake is safer than an e-brake in an emergency stop and that a handbrake on the front is much safer than a handbrake on the rear in an emergency stop! At least it will slow you down without putting you into a tailspin...

I'll take the manually operated front handbrake on my Xantia over a rear e-brake any day thank you. It will actually slow the car down at a pretty decent rate and doesn't rely on any computers or motors for that matter...

[CitroJim]

I'll take the manually operated front handbrake on my Xantia over a rear e-brake any day thank you. It will actually slow the car down at a pretty decent rate and doesn't rely on any computers or motors for that matter...

Same here

I'm surprised these so-called E-Brakes are legal... It was the case back along that the handbrake had to be a fully mechanically operated brake with no electrical, vacuum or hydraulic assistance so as to act as a last-ditch emergency brake in case of total hydraulic failure just as there was a requirement for a direct mechanical link between the steering wheel and the steering rack/box for the same reason. The Citroen Diravi got away with it by having a very loose linkage with a lot of 'play' so if the Diravi failed the steering did not fail totally.

I guess those regulations has been repealed now?

[white exec]

We can't be far off steer-by-wire, I guess now - ship's rudder stuff!
As has been said, as the complexity increases, so does the risk of something not working.
PSA do not have a particularly good record, over the last three decades, where electrical matters are concerned.

[CitroJim]

PSA do not have a particularly good record, over the last three decades, where electrical matters are concerned.

[myglaren]

Simon - what you say seems to be generally accepted. He did say he couldn't shift it out of gear.
VAG investigators could find no fault with the system.

[myglaren]

I read that Independent report with some scepticism too. Agree with Simon about brakes always being able to overcome engine power. So many things don't ring true. And how many cars actually carry a detailed event recorder, covering all those driver/vehicle functions?

I must say I found it hard to believe in its entirety.
There is a module that holds all relevant data but it was destroyed in the collision but had sent enough data to the ABS ECU for the investigators to dismiss any question of system failure as described by the driver.

Everyone involved has an agenda of course.

[elma]

E brakes are misunderstood. One of the first things I did in the Scenic was take it to a safe place and find out what the e brake would do from various speeds. It does not lock the rear wheels as it applys the force gently and brings down the speed. I did not try it whilst turning. It's not as good as a mechanical front handbrake but better than a mechanical rear for emergency stops in my opinion. The Scenic does not like the e brake being used in this manner and will display "parking brake error" until the car is restarted.

[aerodynamica]

Well so far the ECU problem has remained at bay - no recurrence of the pedal sensor problem so the Hyper-active suspension is still working as it should. So far no uncommanded accelerator motorway crash!

I now have a phenomenon with micro bubbles in the LHM tank. It's an old issue I know but the mystery is that this is happening only if I set the suspension to minimum position and the bubbles only appear in the LHM tank with the final few CCs of fluid from the back suspension. I have the return circuit pipe ends modified inside the return filter like some other members - I have a straight connection from the top of the filter block inlet that extends down to well below the LHM level to prevent bubbles occurring from LHM dripping onto the LHM surface. I have this for the two returns for the the suspension but not the brake valve connection (adjascent) as it returns such a small occasional volume, it works well and generally I never get bubbles. Anyway, I eliminated the corner spheres' connection by setting suspension to low after the hydractive regulators switched off (hard mode) and observed the LHM return in the tank. In hard mode there are no bubbles returned whatsoever. It only seems to do this if it's in soft mode. Makes me think one of the center spheres could be leaking gas ?? All 6 suspension spheres are about 8-10 months old.

Anyone else seen this before?