>That's one thing that often worries me about DBW (drive-by-wire -- anlaogous to FBW "fly-by-wire" used on modern aircraft). It's been reliable on military and commercial aircraft -- but then they're usually inspected on a regular basis, meaning that if there are problems, they're often spotted before they become serious. When it comes to personal vehicles, it's likely a different story -- there is high probability that they don't get inspected as often as necessary (we probably know at least a few people who neglect regular maintenance such as oil changes or rotating the tires). For those cases I can see that the only "safe" option is to default DBW system to auto-shutdown when a fault is detected -- however that will result in customer perception that car is unreliable.

And of course they won't do anything like that - perception = sales = $$$ (or €€€, though SFRSFRSFR also makes an interesting sound).

My son-in-law, a technician and a patient car tweaker, has explained to me why the Matrix I had was so good. It was DBW only half-way. The wire from the gas pedal to the fuel injection line was a mechanic one, i.e. it was the good old mechanic direct coupling. The DBW did everything else it could to keep the machine running under optimal parameters, and I didn't notice much of a lag. Actually less than before, because my previous cars weren't exactly nimble.

But I'm experiencing a DBW on my camera. The zoom is mechanic - I turn the ring on the objective, and it extends a group of lenses and I am zooming at my own speed. They also advertised manual focus, which is a fake. It's not manual in the classic sense, that when you turn it back and forth your focus gets that much closer or farther. Nope, it's a jog dial - you can turn it endlessly into any direction; all you are accomplishing is to tell the little motor to turn in this or that direction, without much of a feel as to what it's doing. After more than three years and 16000 shots with this camera, I still don't know which way should I turn it for closer and which for farther (!). And it's off for macro shots, when I actually need it the most, and when I'd want it to, well, stay focused.

After a couple of centuries of learning the feel of mechanical-analog-proportional-immediate connection in the chain of eye-hand-dial-business end of a machine (which we have in all of our faucets, doorhandles, bicycles, and pretty much everything else in our cars), it's a bit dangerous to lull the drivers into this software emulation of gas pedal.

>BTW anybody ever experienced forced system reboot of onboard computer in their car? Pretty weird,

I find the use of "pretty" quite weird in this context :).

> as the car seems to go "dead" for a moment when the computer detects problem and reboots, then resumes normal operation a couple seconds later. A friend of mine had that happen in his car -- a bad sensor, coupled with some errors in ROM forced car into a failsafe reboot under a specific set of conditions.
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>Can you imagine one day in the future, standing outside your vehicle in the cold, trying to convince the computer to let you in ? sort'a like a repeat of a famous scene from "2001"...