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NHTSA Has No Software Engineers To Analyze Toyota
thecarchik writes "An official from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told investigators that the agency doesn't employ any electrical engineers or software engineers, leaving them woefully unable to investigate correctly what caused the most recent Toyota recall. A modern luxury car has something close to 100 million lines of software code in it, running on 70 to 100 microprocessors. And according to consultant Frost & Sullivan, that number will rise to 200 to 300 million lines within a few years. And the software that controls the 'drive-by-wire' accelerators of Toyota and Lexus vehicles is one potential culprit in the tangled collection of issues, allegations, and recalls of many of those vehicles for so-called 'sudden acceleration' problems."
... there is plenty of talent out there for them to hire - even if only on a project by project basis.
sadly, it appears to be true:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-code
Given how much of our vehicles are run by computer, I don't think there should ever be a lack of demand for software engineers at the NHTSA.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Anything street legal without a needing a special waiver for emissions.
Years of deregulation and resource starvation have strangulated our regulatory agencies to the point where they are unable to act.
Much of this based on Greenspan-style Libertarian philosophies that market forces can correct any problem including fraud and crime, a position which he himself has now renounced and we as a people have yet to heed.
Since the late 80s we have been riding on a giant ponzi scheme and its all coming crashing down right now. And yet, nothing. I expect things to get much worse.
Go to a car dealer. Look. Every car sold since 1996 (At least in the US, and I assume the rest of the world) today has at least an ECM (Engine Control Module) which is just a fancy name for a computer controlling the engine. That's what the government mandated OBD-2 program was (OBD == On Board Diagnostics). The number of cars that are completely computer controlled (drive by wire) is far lower, but higher than you'd think.
I had an '05 Chevy Cobalt that had "computer assisted" electromechanical power steering. Basically, what I found out from the dealer after the computer controlling it failed (and I lost all power steering) is that the computer (BCM, Body Control Module) takes inputs from the ABS system, Traction control (if equipped), speedometer, accelerometers and about a dozen other sensors and computes the way it thinks you want to be steering. Then it provides an "intelligent" boost in that direction. I must say, it worked really well in the snow and when fishtailing (it made if VERY difficult to over-correct and put it into a spin). But when it failed, I'd be in the middle of a curve on the highway when all power steering went out... Luckily they were smart enough to put a kill switch in to prevent it from coming back on while the car was moving (I could just imagine struggling through a corner when all of a sudden it came back)... It turns out that it was a software issue in the first place (they updated the software, and it never happened again). I got rid of the car a few years later for other, more significant reasons...
The benefits of computer control are good, but there needs to be intelligent fail-safes put in place to prevent disaster when something does go wrong (not if, when)...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
1. A car designed for manual steering is quite different than one designed for power steering.
2. There is a wide range of speed and turn radius conditions between straight freeway and parking lot.