The company says in the documents that the front windshield wiper motor controller can stop working because it’s getting too much electrical current. A wiper that fails can cut visibility, increasing the risk of a crash. The Austin, Texas, company says it knows of no crashes or injuries caused by the problem.
In the other recall, a trim piece along the truck bed can come loose and fly off, creating a hazard for other motorists.
Tesla says in documents that the trim piece is installed with adhesive, and that may not have been done properly at the factory.
That’s an interesting point there, but have you considered that even with a mechanical link and current safety features, it can still override you? I unfortunately almost drove into someone at very low speeds in a dark rainy parking lot, but the cars safety systems overrode me thankfully. I don’t think they would have been injured it was so slow, but just to show that nowadays with cars you don’t always have full control. In that case it was the brakes not steering, but modern cars can and will prevent you from changing lanes into someone in your blind spot for example.
All of it, mechanical link or not, ultimately comes down to software now, and I’m not sure there would be any real difference between your steering wheel input overriding a self driving system with or without a mechanical link. Putting torque on the wheel while in these semi self driving modes disables the self driving features, but that’s software that disables it when you take over. What if that software failed and you were now fighting the self driving car also trying to steer and as you tried to steer it put equal power against you thinking the steering was rough?
Also with steer by wire if there is a catastrophic failure, turning the wheel will simply do nothing. E.g if both motors simultaneously die, or somehow all 3 signal wires at the steering wheel are cut. Edit: I believe it’s dual battery redundant as well, so the HV and 48v would both need to die to kill steering.
I’ll be honest with you: all but one of the half-dozen (which is too many, BTW) cars I own have manual transmissions, and half of them don’t even have ABS, let alone any other fancy electronic nannies. I mention that to help explain the extent to which I am fundamentally Not On Board with anything that interferes with my manual control of the car. (I’m also a Linux user and a DIYer, which are some more clues to how much of a control freak I am: I expect my property to be exactly the way I want it to be and do exactly what I want it to do, and nothing else.)
Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t mind having radar cruise with lane-keeping for long trips on the freeway, but only if such a system were fail-safe enough that even if it were stuck on, yanking on the wheel hard enough would get the car to turn. I would absolutely insist on the maximum torque the self-driving system could apply being much less than the strength of the human driver. I don’t know if that’s the case in late-model vehicles or not, but if it isn’t, I would consider those vehicles to have an unsafe design.
Well that’s fair. You know what you want, nothing wrong with that.
I really don’t know on this either. Even if you can overpower it though in a worst case fighting you scenario, I imagine that would be a pretty fucked up driving moment.