.My
boss told me “so that means your design will defiantly kill two
people per year!”.
That was 20 years ago, when I was a fresh faced engineering graduate
in my first job at a global car maker. I was designing bits of engine
management system, and as ever I had gone through every possible failure
and worked out how well it was catered for. But one very obscure scenario
involved the car stalling on a hypothetical level crossing near a strong
radio transmitter, a bit tenuous but it is a situation that could happen,
I had gone through the figures and worked out that it was a million
to one chance that the engine would not restart, resulting in something
bad involving a train and sudden localised distortion to the car (ok,
a crash).
I thought that this was a remote chance, but my then boss pointed out
that the systems would be put on about 2 million cars per year in Europe,
hence his terminal conclusion.
I redesigned it. No one had to die.
So its with a great deal of sympathy that I read about Toyota's sticky
pedal problem, millions of cars work fine, yet a handful of freaks necessitate
a total recall. You just cant take chances, even if most of the cars
are absolutely fine.
And this brings me to the point, at last, cars are so reliable these
days that people are totally unable to cope with a simple problem; if
the pedal stays down then either put your toe under it and pull it up
or drop it in neutral, park up and switch off. Easy, but most people
have lost the ability to cope with any sort of problem, and that is
scary.
I say scary because we depend more an more on technology, cars, electricity
supply, computers, the internet, mobile phones, the list goes on. And
for the most part the technology serves us amazingly well, but like
all things it can fail.
I remember in the 70's there were power cuts, no problem; the lights
went out so we lit candles, life goes on. We communicated by actually
talking to people, we were entertained by actually doing things, we
worked by going out and making physical things.
But now, oh dear, if the power fails we seem to be doomed to sitting
in a freezing dark house unable to phone a friend or do any work on
the computer. 'Doomed I say, doomed, captain' (that phrase wont mean
a thing to younger readers).
Now don't get me wrong, I am a great fan of technology. As an engineer
I work on car technology that won't see the glowing lights of a showroom
for maybe seven years, as a writer I would be lost without the word
processor and its fantastic ability to correct my abysmal spelling.
Oh yes ineedy I just cant get enough of the techy stuff.
What I am scared of is the way people are loosing the ability to do
things for themselves. To even bother trying to solve problems seems
to great a challenge, the mind is being numbed and switched off, its
like intentionally loosing the ability to walk just because you can
afford a wheel chair.
Mind you, I suppose if there were to be a mass technology failure and
every useless person was, well, useless, the maybe Engineers will rise
as a united force like a sleeping giant and take over the world. So
its not all bad. ;)