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What has been the greatest number of human lives ever lost due to a software error?
Question
#63429. Asked by gmackematix. (Mar 13 06 1:26 AM)
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lanfranco
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Did you have something specific in mind, or are you just looking for possibilities?
The best I could do is this site, which describes defective software that caused machines delivering radiation treatment for cancer to give lethal doses to four patients from 1985-1987.
A little further down, the site mentions the fact that the disappointing performance of some anti-Scud Patriot missiles during the Gulf War in 1991 could have been caused by a software problem. Scuds did kill a number of people, including 28 American soldiers in a barracks in Dharan, so their deaths might indirectly have been owed to bad software.
 http://www5.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~huckle/art20.html
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mementoflash
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The Chernobyl nuclear accident was probably due to some software errors also the Bhopal chemical plant accident.
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gmackematix
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That Therac-25 device that killed at least four people by giving people multiples of the recommended radiation treatment is a good example of this.
The bug only showed up when operators had learnt to enter the treatments rapidly which they couldn't do at the testing stage.
Another example is when a Chinook helicopter crashed in Scotland in 1994 killing 29. The cause is now thought by many to have been due to failure of the FADEC, a digital computer system that controlled various aspects of the aircraft's performance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug
The Chernobyl accident was caused by poor operating procedures, flawed control rods and a high void coefficient (a tendency for the nuclear reactions to speed up if steam bubbles entered the coolant). The disaster was exacerbated by the lack of a sufficient containment area.
It didn't really have anything to do with software errors.
Similarly, the chemical leak at Bhopal was caused by poor maintenance and cost cutting on materials.
As you say, Frankie, the anti-Scud missile example is a trickier call as they don't directly cause loss of life.
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gmackematix
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I knew I should have refreshed my page before adding the Chernobyl & Bhopal info.
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xfacilitatorx
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There is no such thing as a software error.
It is all human error.
Code writer. Transcriber. Parameter setter. Switch turner-onner/offer. Virus composer. Hung-over, not paying attention to what he/she should be doing-er.
All humans and all computer errors can be traced back to Human error.
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mementoflash
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At Chernobyl the flawed design of the control rods could have easily been caused by software error, and Bhopal's shoddy maintance could have also been exsparated by software error.
Both Space Shuttle accidents occured due to weak materials used in the building process which again could have been due to software error.
Yes, I am now playing a guessing game, but computers and software play such an important role in human life they can almost never be discounted when accidents occur.
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gmackematix
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Of course software errors exist. They are errors in software as opposed to hardware errors or user errors.
The fact that they are human errors doesn't stop them being errors in software.
And as for Memento's guessing game, bear in mind that hardware may now be designed with the aid of software as a matter of course, but this hasn't been the case in the world at large for that long.
Chernobyl and Bhopal were both blamed for cost-cutting in their construction.
As for the shuttle failures, it was known that the tolerance limits of the hardware were being pushed and unnecessary risks were taken. Those were no software glitch.
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