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Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

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Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#71

Post by achr2 »

bradfa wrote: post #62
achr2 wrote: post #57

Isn't it time for an oversight agency that looks at code quality within safety-critical systems? The FDA forces oversight of drugs that less than 100,000 people a year will take. Yet there is no agency looking into the software quality of a car management system that millions of people will drive with every day.

This will add a tremendous amount of cost to product development. This might be worthwhile if simple consumer or industry pressure doesn't work.

I am not advocating that every aspect of a system is tested by an agency, I am simply saying that there should be a body that ensures that safety-critical software development follows a basic set of best practices - avoiding some of pitfalls mentioned in the article.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#72

Post by mikeash »

Jansemon wrote: post #37

How can breaks not stop the engine?! Parking break being a different thing, but the main ones?

By not being used effectively by the driver, mostly.

If your car starts accelerating in an unintended fashion, you should push the brakes to the floor and keep them there, then if you have time shift into neutral and turn off the ignition (this shouldn't be necessary, but will help).

Many drivers won't actually do this in the heat of the moment, though, thus many deadly crashes.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#73

Post by achr2 »

celticninja wrote: post #69
achr2 wrote: post #57

Isn't it time for an oversight agency that looks at code quality within safety-critical systems? The FDA forces oversight of drugs that less than 100,000 people a year will take. Yet there is no agency looking into the software quality of a car management system that millions of people will drive with every day.

That forces the cost onto the state and the state is also inefficient generally so it would take longer than an I ternary review. Then when a bug causes an issue it is the fault of the state for allowing it through and not the company for coding it. In addition private sector usually pays more so the state sector does not get the pick of the coders.

I don't think that an agency should be responsible for the testing, just ensuring that software development best practices are in place, and that the company is actually doing their internal testing.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#74

Post by kps »

alistairSH wrote: post #49
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your two point list is silly. Consumer cars & SUVs can go 0-60 in under 10 seconds in almost all cases, and the fact that the brake can overcome that acceleration is great, except it takes time, and within the time between unexpected acceleration and stopping damage/injuries/death can occur. I had a water bottle fall onto my right leg while turning, this caused a sudden but short lived acceleration (e.g. 10 MpH of un…

Agreed. Modern cars, even the modest ones, are fast enough that they can get out of control very quickly. While the brakes certainly can slow a vehicle with its throttle stuck open, the real question is what impact does that stuck throttle have on the average driver? When the brake doesn't work as expected, does the average driver continue to brake? Do they pump the brake pedal? Something else altogether? How long do…

  > Do they pump the brake pedal?
A comment below mentions this, and it's one factor that can be age-related without invoking ‘dumb old people pressed the accelerator by mistake’. People who learned to drive before ABS were taught to pump the brakes.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#75

Post by mikeash »

tinco wrote: post #31
benihana wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the absurdity of this and arbitrariness. You'll happily drive in a car, one of the most dangerous machines people use regularly. But if it has a computer in it, no siree, that's when things get too deadly to deal with. All of the other thousands of moving parts, like the thing that takes energy-dense hydrocarbons and ignites them several thousand times a second in hot, high pressure tubes - that's fine and tot…

You make it seem silly. But the energy-dense hydrocarbons get combusted in steel/aluminium enclosures that have been battle tested in millions of systems for over 60 years. For it to go wrong billions of atoms need to be displaced at huge energies (much higher than the single combustion). The ECU however, was probably made ~10 years ago by a team of highly incompetent software developers trained as electronics engine…

That battle testing also killed millions of people.

Modern cars are vastly safer. Demonstrably so.

Computers in cars may make them more dangerous. But this is far outweighed by the greater overall safety in the cars that have them. You can't buy an otherwise modern car with no computer control, so your choice is either to buy a modern car with computers, or buy an old car without them. If you're avoiding computers then you're buying an old car, and the result is greatly decreased safety.

This is typical human risk management, of course. The mostly imaginary scenario where your ECU goes nuts and causes you to crash helplessly into a concrete barrier is assigned great importance, where the sadly common scenario of some drunk or texting (or drunk texting) idiot killing you in an accident that modern safety design would have allowed you to walk away from is assigned very little importance.

It's much like people who are afraid of flying but are happy to drive, because the thought of plummeting to their death from 30,000 feet is much more vivid than the thought of being randomly run over by a tractor trailer even though the latter is much more likely.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#76

Post by JoeAltmaier »

mikeash wrote: post #75
tinco wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it seem silly. But the energy-dense hydrocarbons get combusted in steel/aluminium enclosures that have been battle tested in millions of systems for over 60 years. For it to go wrong billions of atoms need to be displaced at huge energies (much higher than the single combustion). The ECU however, was probably made ~10 years ago by a team of highly incompetent software developers trained as electronics engine…

That battle testing also killed millions of people. Modern cars are vastly safer. Demonstrably so. Computers in cars may make them more dangerous. But this is far outweighed by the greater overall safety in the cars that have them. You can't buy an otherwise modern car with no computer control, so your choice is either to buy a modern car with computers, or buy an old car without them. If you're avoiding computers th…

I actually know three people who were run over by a tractor trailer! While I don't know anybody killed in a plane crash.

One was rushed to the hospital with a skull cracked like an eggshell. Almost fully recovered except he can't smell anything.

One had a tractor/trailer fall over while turning a corner, onto his car. He happened to lie in the gap between tractor and trailer, leaving a little uncrushed cell with him in it. No injury.

One was slowing to turn right on a highway; sleepy tractor driver ran fullspeed into the back of his old American car, crushing it utterly up to the back of the front seat. Unhurt. So old American cars have something going for them?

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#77

Post by sakopov »

One of the general principles of engineering ethics states "A practitioner shall, regard the practitioner's duty to public welfare as paramount."

I think part of the problem is that software development isn't considered an engineering discipline and code of engineering ethics goes out the window.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#78

Post by jmhobbs »

radiorental wrote: post #41
delinka wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Brakes" are at the wheels. The only time stopping a car from rolling also affects the engine is when everything remains engaged (manual transmission, manual clutch; in gear, clutch not depressed to the floor.) In a vehicle with an automatic transmission, the transmission begins to disengage from the wheels as the wheels spin slower than the engine is pushing. (Very simplified explanation...) i.e. brakes on cars are…

Also, it's been reported that drivers pumped the brakes in a panic (and understandably so). This will have the effect of reducing the power assist, which is already reduced due to high revs / low vacuum.

I wonder if this is a behavior inherent to older drivers? I'm in my 20's, but my first car was from the late 60's. I hadn't properly bled the master cylinder on my brakes, so I would have to pump them to make them more effective. Just wondering if it's a natural panic behavior, or something learned.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#79

Post by csours »

Splines wrote: post #68

A big takeaway that I got out of this is that nearly everybody forgot about this. People are still buying and driving Toyotas. When the VW emissions thing started making its way through the news cycle, I read comments postulating that this might be the end of VW. Hah - people are going to forget about VW just like they forget about everything else.

> When the VW emissions thing started making its way through the news cycle, I read comments postulating that this might be the end of VW. Hah - people are going to forget about VW just like they forget about everything else.

It wasn't the end of Toyota, and it won't be the end of VW; but it was the end of Toyota's goal to be the Biggest Car Company in the World[1][2], and it may be the end of VW's goal to be the Biggest Car Company in the the World.

Being #1 volume vehicle manufacturer is a curse!

1. https://hbr.org/2007/07/lessons-from-toyotas-long-drive - Interestingly, in this article Mr Watanabe claims that Toyota never had the goal to be the biggest car company.

2. http://www.economist.com/node/15576506 - James Womack, one of the authors of “The Machine that Changed the World”, a book about Toyota's innovations in manufacturing, dates the origin of its present woes to 2002, when it set itself the goal of raising its global market share from 11% to 15%. Mr Womack says that the 15% target was “totally irrelevant to any customer” and was “just driven by ego”. According to Mr Womack, the requirement to expand its supply chain rapidly “meant working with a lot of unfamiliar suppliers who didn't have a deep understanding of Toyota culture.”

Disclosure - I work for GM, these opinions are my own, etc.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#80

Post by dmethvin »

stretchwithme wrote: post #9

These unintended acceleration incidents seem to happen mostly to elderly drivers. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/03/how-real...

In this particular case, 150-foot skid marks indicate that the driver was trying pretty hard to stop.

No doubt there are accelerator-brake confusions in many of these cases, especially with older drivers. I'm really hesitant to say they all are in that category. Investigators need more "black box" info to see, for example, whether the accelerator and/or brake were being pressed in the seconds before an accident.

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