Automotive Software Seems Fragile

Automotive software seems a lot more fragile than I’d like to believe. Here’s a couple stories about minor errors causing mayhem. Thanks to a glitch, some Seattle Mazda drivers can’t tune their radios away from KUOW As the radio remained frozen, the rebooting visuals on the screen in the middle of the dashboard were just too distracting when he was driving. Welding ended up covering the spot with cardboard.Erik Lacitis, Updated February 11, 2022, seattletimes.com Tuning to KUOW, caused some Mazda in-vehicle infotainment systems to fail. According to the Seattle Times, the error impacted 2014-2017 Mazdas with HD Radio infotainment systems. The cause of the failure was seemingly broadcasting images without a file extension. That’s not the first infotainment system related error. The Reply All podcast had an episode about how another podcast 99% Invisible broke Mazda. The combination of Bluetooth + car radio + the 99% Invisible podcascaused some Mazda’s radios to freeze, shut down and restart. The podcast is embedded, and can also be found here. The problem (now long fixed) had to do with the name of the podcast. Reply All’s Brilliant Roman Mars Episode Messes With the Podcasting Industry Oftentimes, the internet being what it is, these adventures touch the surface of something much darker, perhaps even dangerous. Not so with the case of Ben’s malfunctioning Mazda, which instead leads Goldman & Co. into a journey of pure whimsy. In their bid to figure out why the car so vehemently rejects 99% Invisible — is it Mars’s voice?…Automotive Software Seems Fragile