BMW glitch locks Thai minister in

By Staff, ZDNet Asia
Friday, May 16, 2003 10:13 AM
A high-ranking Thai official was forced to crawl out of the shattered windows of his luxury car following an onboard glitch that sealed all exits.

BMW has told CNETAsia that an electronic fault caused the problem, rather than a system crash of the car's Windows-based central computer, as other reports have speculated.

Suchart Jaovisidha, Thailand's finance minister, was on his way to address central bank officials from around the world when his state-assigned BMW stalled, the Associated Press reported.

"The engine stopped, the air conditioning shut down, the doors got locked and the windows wouldn't roll down," Suchart was quoted as saying.

"We couldn't breathe because there was no air," he added.

To draw attention, the minister and his driver waved frantically at passers-by. The incident ended only after a nearby security guard smashed the car's windows with a sledgehammer.

Even with the heavy-duty tool, Suchart said it took a long time to break the windows as the "glass proved to be very resistant".

The harrowing experience lasted about 10 minutes, he said.

Suchart returned home and took his personal vehicle, also a BMW, to the speech venue, the report said.

Reports have speculated that the famously glitchy BMW 745i car, and its Windows CE-powered iDrive car computer, may have been the vehicle in the incident.

But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure. She declined to reveal if the firm received identical reports from other users in the country.

According to previous reports, BMW recalled 15,000 iDrive-equipped 7-series cars, one of its most luxurious sedans, globally last May and 286 more in Korea two months after. Linux proponents have said that BMW engineers may be turning to embedded Linux as an alternative operating system.

The Korea Times said a software problem in the electronic management unit of the car's fuel pump could make the engine stall.


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Talkback 13 comments

What? You mean the door won't unlock in an electric failure? This is a safety hazard. It is not very hard to cause an electric failure in a car. How is one supposed to get out of the vehicle after an accident? This could have been fatal.
Posted by Kurt on Thursday, May 15 2003 12:01 PM

If it had been running linux...

They never would have gotten the car running to begin with.
Posted by Joe on Saturday, May 17 2003 05:29 AM

Linux would never stop the BMW from running BUT after using Linux it does stop detractors mouths from running off.
Posted by Bob T on Saturday, May 17 2003 12:13 PM

Haha .... M$ rulez ! I want Linux on my BMW !
Posted by Haha haa ! on Monday, May 19 2003 09:11 PM

Hello Mr.Tux.....,Welcome to my BMW :)
Posted by Ivan Noor on Sunday, August 03 2003 02:36 AM

DEAR SIR :

WE HAVE BMW 2002 745I THE IT IS NEW THE MOUSE CANT MOVE VERY GOOD TO THE LH AND RH BUT THE FILE CANT OPEN WHEN WE PRESS THE MOUSE SUCH AS RADIO CD TV NAVE ETC I HAVE GOT THE SAME CAR I TRIED EVRY THING BY CHANGING THE WHOLE SYSTEM IN THE BACK AND THE SAME PROBLEM WHAT CAN I DO FOR THIS PROBLEM PLEASE
I THINK THERE IS A SOFTWARE IS DISTROID INSIDE THE CAR HOW CAN I REPAIR THIS CAR IS THERE ANY SYSTEM TO WRITE READAND EREASE TOREPAIR THIS PROBLEM IS THERE ANTY THING ELSE PLEASE
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR REPLY
HUSSAAM
Posted by HUSSAAM on Thursday, October 23 2003 02:10 AM

My, my, my... it seems Technological Darwinism is slated to become Physical Darwinism. First we just had businesses become "less fit" by using buggy, virus-prone, horribly expensive Microsoft products. And now we start seeing those who are prone to believing advertising and marketing over merit, preparing to pay for that trait not just with their incomes, but with their lives. Oh, Microsoft products have their strengths, but reliability has never been one of them. If you doubt this, try to picture the look on Bill Gate's face if he were ever to be in a hospital (perhaps from a car accident caused by lazily forgetting to download the latest patch for his BMW), and glanced over at the life support system to notice the "Powered By Windows" on the ventilator.
Posted by Rex Devious on Saturday, November 29 2003 02:40 AM

--------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
Full name: Joe
Location: somewherez
Occupation: IT
Comments:

If it had been running linux...

They never would have gotten the car running to begin with.
--------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------

If your occupation is IT, and you can't get Linux running, you're in the wrong business.
Posted by Chris on Saturday, November 29 2003 03:11 AM

Well there's obviously a little more to the story than some are willing to admit...
Posted by rob on Saturday, November 29 2003 06:49 AM

If BMW used Linux you'd be waiting forever for an upgrade because they all would be fighting over what version you had and if you had paid for that version to begin with. Then there is the fact with some many people coding Linux you never know what you have.
Posted by C on Saturday, November 29 2003 12:11 PM

I agree. If cars ran windows ce, then it would take 8 minutes just to get your car started.

If you can not run linux then you also probably cant run VMS, Solaris, BSD, etc, etc, etc. If you can not run any of theese it means that you are a MSCE (microsoft certified slave)
Posted by Bailey on Saturday, November 29 2003 02:27 PM

C: You are not only a Network Slave but a mentally-retarded M$ slave -- stop spreading FUD... you are using SCO's arguments no less.

If the used Linux, BMW would be using a home-bred distro for sure.

The source code in GNU/Linux can be perfectly traced to the one who coded it, as opposed to *all* propietary/closed source code.

Please go learn a bit about the matter before you try to comment on something.
Posted by D on Saturday, November 29 2003 10:03 PM

You guys are stupid. Your use of terms such as "M$" and condoning of Linux for everything -- no matter how inappropriate -- indicates this.
Posted by anonymous on Sunday, November 30 2003 03:35 AM

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