If you’ve ever flown you’ve depended on fly by wire systems to keep you safe and I personally don’t see systems like this for land vehicles to be necessarily any less safe inheritanly. The main issues with all these things that I see is that auto manufacturers seem to be raking increasingly cavalier attitudes to vehicle safety and reliability these days in an effort to squeeze ever more profits.
Steer by wire in cars has neither the redundancy nor the oversight/certification that the system in planes does. But more importantly is actually a better system for a car? Is there something that mechanical power assisted steering can’t do that would warrant the need for steer by wire?
If you’ve ever flown you’ve depended on fly by wire systems to keep you safe
If I’m flying it means I’ve already decided to put my trust in a pilot and it’s up to him to manage the risk of systems failures, not me. It’s an entirely different thing.
Now, if I were piloting a small plane myself, then it would be comparable – but I’d probably want to have mechanical linkages between the yoke and the control surfaces in that case, too!
If you’ve ever flown you’ve depended on fly by wire systems to keep you safe and I personally don’t see systems like this for land vehicles to be necessarily any less safe inheritanly. The main issues with all these things that I see is that auto manufacturers seem to be raking increasingly cavalier attitudes to vehicle safety and reliability these days in an effort to squeeze ever more profits.
Steer by wire in cars has neither the redundancy nor the oversight/certification that the system in planes does. But more importantly is actually a better system for a car? Is there something that mechanical power assisted steering can’t do that would warrant the need for steer by wire?
If I’m flying it means I’ve already decided to put my trust in a pilot and it’s up to him to manage the risk of systems failures, not me. It’s an entirely different thing.
Now, if I were piloting a small plane myself, then it would be comparable – but I’d probably want to have mechanical linkages between the yoke and the control surfaces in that case, too!