So, this is *very* important to note - as this article makes a common, but crucial error.
Not in the heavy/large vehicle warnings (which are valid), but in describing the #NTSB as a "safety regulator".
(Remember that editors are typically responsible for the article headlines, not the authors.)
The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) is an independent government agency that is a *investigatory body* for, mostly, transportation-related safety issues. (cont.) 🧵
The NTSB *investigates* transportation-related safety incidents and issues safety *recommendations* to regulators such as the #FAA (for commercial aircraft) and the #NHTSA (for automotive).
The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is *not* required to adopt the NTSB's recommendations and it very often does not, unfortunately.
This is a common mistake, I think, because the NTSB and the NHTSA look like pretty similar agency acronyms at first.
(cont.)
The #NTSB is *not* a regulator for automotive safety issues and the NTSB has no regulatory powers.
This is important because, oftentimes, public pressure is misapplied towards to the NTSB to act when the public pressure should *really* be directed at the #NHTSA.
The NHTSA is a horribly ineffective safety regulator which is why, in some part, we are at a 20-year high in US roadway deaths and 40-year high in US pedestrian deaths.
(cont.)
If you intend to reach out to your elected officials on matters involving automotive or roadway safety, be sure to point to the correct agency (the NHTSA).
A large part of the effectiveness issues with the NHTSA is that it is structurally under-funded by #Congress and it, therefore, lacks the proper skill sets to do anything even marginally impactful (that and the serious "revolving door" issues, which can also be handled by new laws and agency policies).
@DuncanWatson Yup. It is bad. REALLY bad.
The agency has an enforcement budget of about $40 million USD - that might as well be nothing compared to the resources of the industry.
The NHTSA clings for dear life to its #FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) dogma - which is inflexible and *at least* a decade out-of-date.
The agency could not even proactively discover dead-simple mechanical defects in the past... they stand *zero* chance against increasingly "software-defined" vehicles.
No, we instead have game consoles in the drivers console. We have emergency brakes that are fully electronic and don't actually work in an emergency. We have cars that can trap you inside due to software malfunctions while you roast to death.
But the stuff that really gets me is the day to day issues about headlights, turn signals and other shared interface issues. How we all interact and signal our intentions on the road.
@DuncanWatson Oh! The "cars should be smartphones/game consoles" safety catastrophe should have been killed in its infancy (largely pioneered by #Tesla).
And the NHTSA just let it metastasize.
Now... BEV consumers are *demanding* these features - so now *every* automaker is racing to include them in some way.
A race to the bottom. Truly.
And the NHTSA just sits back and hand-waves it away as "oh well... the driver is to blame".
Supremely frustrating. We are living the nightmare.
@adamjcook also Android auto and car play need to face regulation. Some of the design decisions keep getting changed every month or so and really I want to speak to their manager.
But in general the recent minimalism in controls is just terrible.
@DuncanWatson Oh. I could not agree more.
I audibly gasped the day that Apple released this: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/apple-announces-multi-display-carplay/
There are dead-simple safety questions here just in this article alone... and the NHTSA could care less.
@adamjcook I shake my head at this kind of stuff. It is like they don't have anyone who has supported mission critical embedded systems even look at it.
I literally just got out of an incident review meeting where I had to ask about exception handling that led to it. 12 other people who are all more senior than me didn't want to bring it up.
And this is with SW only cloud based product, no lives at risk. No fires to start. Not the case in a car.
@adamjcook Back in the 90s I worked with SW licensing dongles. We had a competitor who didn't follow the ADB spec properly and used our assigned ID on the bus. Turns out that our data fed into their device triggered pathways in their ASIC that weren't fully built. It set their device ON FIRE. Their product would literally melt and burn.
There used to be so much research and design done. Real stuff about how user interfaces work and how they affect the driver performance and control.
@adamjcook Remember how much work Ma Bell did on the 7 digit phone number? It was a big deal.
Goggle in Android Auto has moved the mute/unmute functionality in google maps SO many times since this summer. Yet, it is a big deal to bury this in submenus. I feel like I can sense the talk in the various scrum sessions. I know what SW devs are like. I know they hate documentation.
Gah.
Adam Cook
DuncanWatson