[Mark McLeod]

It's pretty safe even if you write your own code. There is a small window for bypassing the fail-safe, but to exploit it involves purposely entering autonomous mode.
Potentially, that autonomous bit in the communication packet can be accidentally overwritten by bad code and prevent fail-safe operation, however, even that's unlikely as it is usually packed into the first memory block and user code comes after that.

We can only bypass the loss of transmitter override by explicitly informing the master controller that we want to operate in autonomous mode. While in this autonomous mode though we are given the transmission packet from the remote control transmitter with all 127's. So if we are running solely off the commands from the transmitter we'll usually be alright.

The only window for error that I know of is if your code sets autonomous while receiving valid transmitter data. In that specific case the GetData packet will retain the last known transmitter values and your code keeps receiving it. The Master doesn't set the packet to neutral except at the start (auto or not) and unless it's in tele-op mode and several transmitter packets go missing.

Anyone know of another way to bypass the fail-safe?