Re: Ada and Automotive Industry

[Ralph Paul <paul@tornado.aem.umn.edu>]

jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) writes:

> 
> In article <EACHUS.96Nov21153411@spectre.mitre.org> eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
> 
> > In article <3293C05E.7932@thomsoft.com> Dave Wood <dpw@thomsoft.com> writes:
> >    You are an optimist.  There has already been one major incident
> > like this (the Audi 5000), and one which is just developing (air-bags
> 
> Sorry.  There never was any evidence that there was anything wrong
> with the Audi 5000 accelerator.  All the evidence pointed to the
> incompetence of the average American driver - who appears to be too
> stupid and clumsy to be able to determine the difference between an
> accelerator and break pedal.
> 
> 
> > The belief is that the Audi 5000 cases were single point hardware
> > failures
> 
> Baloney.  The end reports indicated a failure of the drivers to
> differentiate break and accelerator.  Part of the problem appears to
> have been due to the placement of the pedals favoring a driver who
> actually knows something about car control and higher performance
> driving.  Unfortunately, the marketeers targeted the wrong folks over
> here.

Sorry, but I have to add my $0.02 (;-). The american customers may
indeed have pressed the 'break' pedal instead of hitting the brakes
(:-). Otherwise they would not have been hurt.

In defense of Audi, I have to say that the only country in the world where
customers had problems with the Audi 5000 was the U.S !
I can't remember anyone in Germany or Europe making a case about the
so called faulty automatic gearbox. Since the engine, driveshaft, gearboxes
... are all the same, this problem should have shown up on every Audi 5000.

CU, 

Ralph Paul

	paul@aem.umn.edu
or	ralph@ifr.luftfahrt.uni-stuttgart.de  ( forwarded to above )