> The idea of writing code that could put someone's life on the line is totally terrifying to me.
That's very reasonable :-)
I've worked on very safety-critical systems before. It's fun!
For one thing, you get to do things right. Sure, there are deadlines, but nobody dares to tell you to leave things half-baked. If it takes time, then it take time. Shoo, manager.
For another, you must dive deep into the behaviour of your embedded (mechanical/electrical/software) system and understand all its corner cases, even in the face of faults ("OK, so we're doing this operation, and now a cosmic ray hits and a crucial bit flips in RAM -- do we have a detection and safe reaction?")
Apart from the fun-ness, realise you're not in it alone. You'll be supported by a bunch of your fellow engineers double-checking your work, testing the system, etc., so your confidence in the system is quite high.
