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)
#2Critical systems should be open source by law.
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#3I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle.
Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way.
And that's not even touching on the insanity of building computerized vehicle systems with always-on GSM data links to the Net. Ask Michael Hastings how that worked out for him.
Also I agree that critical systems software should be legally required to be open source.
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#4Critical systems should be open source by law.
Not sure it would help any, it's not exactly hard to find very low quality code on Github.
It IMHO shows a failure of the type approval process, maybe it didn't evolve enough with regard to the amount of software used in safety critical components. Inspiration from aircraft certification would likely be mùore than welcome in that regard...
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#5I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…
Agree. What about power steering? You won't get any car without nowadays. Do you count non-computerized (servo) power-steering as "mechanical steering"?
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#6I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…
Agree. What about power steering? You won't get any car without nowadays. Do you count non-computerized (servo) power-steering as "mechanical steering"?
I don't think you'd be able to get any new non-computerized car at all today. Emission control makes computerization an absolute requirement. That's why choice in cars for people who feel the way I do is limited to old cars from pre-90s. Suits me fine.
Servo power steering is acceptable, though my present car (1993 Subaru stationwaggon) has direct steering, and I prefer that.
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#7I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…
Same here, I drive the last year of the car model with mechanical steering and accelerator, on purpose.
It's really hard to find cars with curtain airbags though without electronic accelerator and fake steering.
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#8Patio11 has talked about how programmers are little respected and paid poorly in Japan compared with the US. Could this have something to do with Toyota's code quality being so poor and causing this issue?
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#9These unintended acceleration incidents seem to happen mostly to elderly drivers.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/03/how-real...
Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)
#10I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…
Though I have a strong preference for analog/physical/mechanical systems in cars, the main reason for this is more that they're far easier and more fun to work on, rather than reasons of safety.
I'd hazard a guess that in a serious crash you're going to have a far better chance of survival in a modern car (crumple zones, airbags/side-cushions/curtains, ABS etc) vs a ~1980's or older car, and that the cause of said crash would be human error rather than a bug in the engine throttle code.