I don't think that the culprit here is the evil drive by wire throttle controls. For decades virtually all diesels in cars, light trucks, and semi's have been drive by wire. There is no mechanical linkage whatsoever. They also have numerous fail safes to prevent issues. They have multiple sensors in the pedal to prevent one from causing an event. If one or more read different than the others, the vehicle enters a forced idle. Same thing happens if the pedals are applied together. It is almost impossible to have an issue unless the pedal gets stuck, which will do the same thing on a linkage vehicle.
Most large airplanes and fighters operate the same way, and they very rarely have issues. If there is an issue, they fall out of the sky. The same analogy could be made for hydraulic brakes since there is no fail safe and a parking brake will not do anything at speed. But hydraulics have been safely implemented for decades. The technology for this is all proven and tested, but we do not have any mandated rules or standards for there use in cars.
The real problem is the execution and quality control. Airplanes and big trucks have required strict standards and very specific designs for a very long time. Everybody has to do it the same way and to the same standard. Autos are different. There is no Federally mandated standard and no set of must have rules and fail safes in place. Couple that with the lowest bidder mindset for product design and production and you can have a very serious problem. As much as a I dislike regulations, I think there need to be some for these systems as they will NOT be going away. Make everybody do it the same way and to the same degree, and borrow the principles used in other industries that have been around for decades and that are far more dependent on these systems.
