When the steering lock on my car failed the engine control unit ( ECU ) refused to start the car. Hence a recovery service was needed to get the car home and then another trip to the main dealer.
The lock was OK. the fault was the communication port in the lock's micro-processor. Fortunately it failed in a super market car park. Had it been on a road in a remote location then the inconvenience and possible risks would have been much higher.
Older technology would have allowed the lock to be removed and a couple of wires joined to "cheat" the ECU into thinking the steering was unlocked. The the car could be driven to a safe place until a repair could be made.
Modern cars are designed for easy, fast and low cost assembly with little thought about ease and costs of repair and maintainance.
But again, the only reason theres a steering lock solenoid and position sensor and all that crap, is because they've decided to remove the ignition key and give you a plastic slot and a button instead. The slot and button serves NO purpose whatsoever, and gives NO advantages over a standard key (infact its actually worse, because theres now two actions required in seperate physical locations!), but now means that instead of a nice mechanical steering lock that NEVER went wrong, you've got a whole pile of unreliable electronics clarted onto it that doesnt need to be there.
K.I.S.S. needs to be applied!
Same as electronic handbrakes. What exactly does it gain you? Its added complexity for no gain whatsoever.
I can fully understand it in places. I'd far rather have a nice modern EFI petrol with wideband lambda sensor and electronically controlled turbocharger than a carb and a distributor with points. Because it has actual tangible benefits. Or a common rail diesel than one with indirect injection and a lucas rotary pump. The car makes more power, uses less fuel, becomes nicer to drive etc etc.
Similarly modern advances in braking systems with ESP etc are useful, sure not everyone will like the nannying, but for the vast majority of people it makes the car far safer than having no ABS at all. This is a good thing.
It just seems to me that they've reached a point with these technological improvements, and tried to start splashing them around EVERYWHERE inside the car, rather than only where its actually an improvement. Then they make it worse by using non-standard proprietary locked down interfaces for everything making working on it all completely impossible.
