Delta_G:
But you don't see any passenger cars out there running drive by wire for anything aside from throttle control because even the big boys at the automakers can't get them good enough t pass NTSA. Safety protocols or not, doing dangerous things is still dangerous. It is impossible for you to anticipate any possible failure so it is impossible to say that you've accounted for them all.
I would like to mention mega squirt, should look that up started as a 8bit chip, the latest development was in 2010 using a MC9S12XEP100 and that is used to run engines that could over fuel and create a fiery death....