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January 20, 2005
Testing Anti Lock Brakes
Sue has recently purchased a new car and it was very important for her that the car have anti-lock brakes (ABS). We went together to test drive the cars and I was determined to test the ABS in each car we drove. It was reassuring to hear the ABS system start pumping as I made a hard stop, but it made me wonder - do all people that get cars with ABS test that feature? Also, isn't it unfair to expect the customer to test that feature? Shouldn't the manufacturer test it out, too? I will fully admit that I know very little about the car manufacturing process, so I'm just curious - how DOES the manufacturer test that each car with ABS has it working correctly? I'm guessing that it doesn't test each individually because that would be infeasible. I'm guessing they test a few "throw away" cars that they crash to make sure all the safety system work properly.
But this made me think about how difficult it can sometimes be to write software that's testable - especially if you don't think about testing from the start.
I'm happy to say that Sue signed the contract yesterday and is the happy owner of a 2005 Toyota Corolla LE. We used a service that gives us the dealer cost for cars and I have to say it was well worth the price. This made the whole negotiating process a lot easier.
Posted by Misha Rybalov at January 20, 2005 01:30 PM