Has Increased Complexity Made It More Dangerous To Drive?

To put it in perspective a Porsche engineer said a normal gasoline's engine's ECU has 5000 lines of code...a hybrid's Engine ECU has 25,000 lines of code! So it is 5 times more likely the beast living in the machine can work his way out now and again!

More dangerous ? not really. It's the responsability of each driver to learn how their car work. It is sometimes not more complex, just different. However, I think a lot of fancy feature tend to complicate vehicle operation while not being helpful at all to its driver.

Here's one example :

Key fob + Start engine button : In most cases, you need to enter the huge unpractical fob into a slot and then push a button. That's far more complicated and unconvenient than inserting a key in the starter and turning it.

I often wonder just how many people even read the manual other than the overview.

I think the complex comes from the actual shift patterns shown, even though it is probably an up and down for R N D, the arrows do not really make it easy as they lead one to assume you have to return to a central point on the right before shifting.

That shifter is most likely from a hybrid like the Prius or Insight

i have believed ever since my college days that PROPERLY DONE, more complex systems can actually SIMPLIFY operating processes.

paddle shift automatics are a prime example. they are actually EASIER to drive, and drive FAST, than old manual trannys. but they are of course far more complex in their innards.

the stick in the illustration (from a prius?) is another example. with the CVT, there is not even a D2, D3, and L. the B sorta replaces L for extra regen braking.

fly-by-wire computer controls also keep advanced airframe jet fighters flying, which would ordinarily be IMPOSSIBLE to keep in the air with manual controls.

Simple answer? People for the most part are just resistant to change when it comes to operating machinery (read dumb). If someone is having a rough time figuring out the gear selector pictured, then they shouldn't even be driving the vehicle IMO.

Correction: "They shouldn't be driving ANY vehicle"

The problem is not even the complication itself, but rather, assuming the driver knows how to work the car, what happens when there is a software bug/error/virus/malfunction? Or worse yet, design defect where the programmer forgot to include a brake override (ie/ Prius)?

In 25,000 lines of code, there is much more possibility of error than in 5,000 lines of code. For example, how many times have you bought software and out of the box it was defective? No problem, you just exchange it. Well, what happens when the defect arises while driving 60MPH on the freeway - it's hard to return the car for a new one after you've died in the collision. Again, like software, it's a 1 in 20,000 failure rate, or even 1 in 100,000, but guess what? The failure rate before drive by wire was much lower.

I believe the debate is whether it's worth it to shift everything from mechanical to digital for the sake of efficiency. At what point does the diminishing returns justify increasing the danger to human life as a result of software malfunction? Hardware malfunction is easy to spot, something is broken, torn or disconnected. Software malfunction is very difficult to identify and even easier to hide - again, see Toyota's argument that they still haven't identified the exact cause of the "unintended acceleration" and their earlier denial that it was software based has suddenly become a possibility now.

AMEN BROTHER

Just so you know ...

In terms of lines of code, it is estimated that Windows XP has 40 MILLION lines of code and the newer Windows 7 is estimated to have 50+ MILLION lines of code. Apple Mac OS is around 90 million.

And that is just the operating system. Add another 30 million for Office and I am running about 70 million lines of code (using XP) just to type this posting to Autospies.

It isn't the amount of lines in the code that makes it bad, it's how effecient those lines of codes are coded that really matters.