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."

Comments

Here come the shackles.

[HungWeiLo]

Here comes DO-178B for cars.

I wonder what the cost is per line of code?

Re:Heads better roll

[je ne sais quoi]

I don't why I even respond because I'm sure to get a troll mod but I'd just like to point out that one of the major political parties solution to bad government is no government at all. This poorly functioning government is a direct result of the dual conservative mantras: 1) deregulation of markets is necessary for them to perform well and 2) less government is better. We saw how well #1 worked in the banking industry, this is more of the same. #2 results in chronically understaffed government agencies, or government agencies not able to do what they're supposed to do (e.g. the Republican senators holding up Obama's appointees right now).

My parents both worked for the FDA and if the NHTSA operates in any similar way to the FDA, it's a shadow of itself in the 1970s. For the FDA that means that there are less food inspectors and no surprise, there is a rise in food poisoning incidents. I wouldn't be surprised if NHTSA is also chronically understaffed. Additionally, even if individual government workers wanted to do their jobs, they are often prevented by doing so because that is not perceived as "business friendly". The political appointees who run the show are in the thrall of private industry, in fact, they are often people taken directly from private industry (e.g. big pharma lobbyists often run the FDA). This "government capture" is the fault of the democrats just as much as the republicans, e.g. Obama lied about hiring lobbyists in his campaign. Basically, we have a non-functioning government and one party's answer to this is the get rid of the thing all together. That is one solution but that wouldn't prevent things like this incident with Toyota.

I'm sure Toyota will do the right thing though, because that would be in its interests as a good corporate citizen. *snicker*

Re:Huh!

[megamerican]

If the NHTSA didn't exist Toyota would have had to spend money to fix the problem instead of paying ex-regulators to quash multiple investigations.

Toyota (TM) hired ex-government regulators to kill at least four investigations into problems with its cars in the U.S. That's the conclusion of an investigation by Bloomberg. The news service reports that, "Christopher Tinto, vice president of regulatory affairs in Toyota's Washington office, and Christopher Santucci, who works for Tinto, helped persuade the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to end probes including those of 2002-2003 Toyota Camrys and Solaras, court documents show. Both men joined Toyota directly from NHTSA, Tinto in 1994 and Santucci in 2003. "

The same goes for Wall Street. Most of the financial regulators are former high level executives from Goldman Sachs or strong ties to them and other financial institutions.

I don't understand why we need so many useless regulators who are usually wolves being put in charge of the hen house when the courts could easily handle this. It's going to end up being prosecuted in a court of law anyway and not solved by some magic regulation hand-waving.

Re:This all story starts to look like swine flu

[binarylarry]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/RunawayToyotas/toyota-acceleration-problems-new-evidence-imprisoned-minnesota-toyota-camry-owner/story?id=9903455

This guy apparently killed a few people and got put in jail for it. Now it looks like he was telling the truth when he said the car wouldn't stop.

Re:consultants

[rainmayun]

I can promise you have independent verification and validation contracts are bread & butter in the federal contracting world. The federal government has made huge strides in the direction of outsourcing almost all technical expertise, and quite a bit of management expertise (google "federal PMO contracts" for lots of random examples). The few civil servants left in many agencies are a kind of sheepherders, managing vast groups of contractors.

Re:100 million lines? Sure, we will get right on i

[bhtooefr]

And they said in a modern luxury car.

So that's all the code in the following computers:

Engine (controls throttle and such)
Transmission
Collision avoidance (ABS, traction control, etc. TPMS is usually here, too, because it's sometimes part of the ABS system to save costs)
Safety (airbags, seatbelt pretensioners, etc.)
Central convenience (security system, power locks, power windows, cabin illumination, in some cars even the exterior lighting goes through central convenience)
HVAC
Instrumentation (yep, there's a computer dedicated to that - and some security functions are sometimes in there)
Entertainment (navigation, stereo, DVD, etc., etc.)

And all these systems are interconnected.

You get in your car (central convenience deactivates security upon receiving the signal, and when you open the door, it illuminates the cabin, alerts the engine computer that a start is imminent, possibly starting fuel pumps, on diesel cars turning on the glow plugs, etc., etc., and notifies the instrument cluster that the door is ajar.)

You insert your key into the ignition (yes, I know about push-button start,) and start the engine (engine computer starts up, after which the instrument cluster polls the RFID chip on the key. If it can't get a read, it immediately requests that the engine computer shut down.)

You decide that you want a little heat before you set off, so you use your steering wheel controls (which go through instrumentation) to set HVAC settings, and then you figure some music won't hurt (entertainment.) Then, you remember that you don't know where you're going, so you punch the address into the navigation system, and it feeds directions back to the instrument cluster.

Now, you put the car into gear. The transmission computer notifies the other computers about this, and the engine computer adjusts the idle fueling to compensate. The instrument computer reflects the gear change. The central convenience module turns on the daytime running lights. The entertainment system might prevent you from using the touchscreen interface. The safety computer may become more persistent about reminding you that you didn't put on your seat belt, and will notify the instrument cluster of this, to annoy you more.

After you put your seatbelt on, you let off the brake and pull out of your parking space. Obviously, the engine computer and transmission computer are working together here, the instrument cluster is constantly updating the status of those (and the entertainment computer, which is noting the changes in vehicle position.) After you hit 10 MPH, the engine or transmission computer sends a request to the central convenience module to lock the doors.

Now, you're going down the freeway, and right in front of you, a semi truck loses control, and flips onto its side. You jam on the brakes, which kills engine power immediately (engine computer, and the transmission computer is affected as well, and this all gets fed back to the instrument computer.) Collision avoidance computer activates ABS and (as you're attempting to swerve out of the way) stability control, and notifies the central convenience computer that you're undergoing a panic stop, and to activate the hazards.

Unfortunately, you don't have enough time and room to stop, and you hit the semi. The safety computer notices this, and fires the seatbelt pretensioners and the appropriate airbags. Once that's done, there's some less immediate concerns. It would be a bad idea to leave the engine running, so the safety computer requests an engine shutdown. The transmission computer may be requested to shift to neutral, to make moving the wreck easier. The entertainment system will be told to stop playing music, and if it's got a system like OnStar (which used to be yet another TWO separate computers off of the entertainment system,) an emergency call initiated. Instrumentation is of course updating the status of all of this. HVAC may be set to off. The collision avoidance computer will still be trying to keep t

unlikely, given most networks are separated

[SuperBanana]

Here comes DO-178B for cars.

The vehicle drivetrain network is very often, if not always, separate from the "entertainment" network; Audi, for example, runs two separate CAN busses for them. The original story hypes things a bit; there may be 70-100 microCONTROLLERS, but half or more of them are "body" (ie windows, sunroof, etc) or "entertainment"(audio, navigation) related and thus don't really need to be reviewed.

The vast majority of them do very, very simple things, mostly sending CAN bus messages or responding to CAN bus commands. Ie, you move the wiper stalk. The microcontroller for the steering wheel controls says "the stalk moved" either to the wiper motor interface or a 'body control' computer, which then sends a command to the wipers.

The code review for most of the modules, as a result, is extremely simple- they're just (mostly digital) I/O boxes. Some of them are things like fuel pump modules, which at most have some diagnostic capabilities (like current draw from the pump, pressure sensor, etc.)

The code review will not be very problematic for engine computers, because (gasp!) they're not made by car manufacturers. Bosch, Magnetti Marelli, Hitachi, and a couple of other companies are the primary producers. And guess what? The code is largely the same car-to-car. Parameters are changed- code doesn't, so much. And car companies share "platforms", which further simplifies things.

It's not nearly as scary as it sounds.