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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.
Here comes DO-178B for cars.
I wonder what the cost is per line of code?
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
If the statement in the article is true then this country is in even worse shape than I thought. It seems like rarely a handful of months can go by without the realization that yet another Federal department is completely incompetent. How in the hell does the NHTSA even do their job?! They are supposed to ensure that vehicles are safe but they don't even have the staff to do that.
What the hell is wrong with our country?
They don't need Electrial Engineers or Software Engineers. They need Computer Engineers, people who are trained to understand both sides of the hardware/software boundary.
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
Which car company do work for?
A major one.
What exactly would the NHTSA do with a set of engineers? Audit all 100 million lines of code for each and every car they suspect has a safety issue with the computer system? Yeah, that sounds like a worthwhile endeavor. How about they do it the old fashioned way; collect the reports, identify the risk, and sanction the manufacturer to find/fix the problem. Thinking that an NHTSA coder (or a hundred) would have gotten to the bottom of this Toyota issue in any reasonable amount of time is a joke!
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!
Given that there isn't a car made today whose safety can be properly evaluated without the skills of EE and software engineers, why would it be inefficient for the agency responsible for that evaluation to have people with those skills on staff? It's not like next years cars won't have even more of the same complete with modified firmware to examine.
Given that the safety evaluation will involve interactions between mechanical, electrical and software systems, you'd want a cohesive multi-disciplinary team, not a revolving door.
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.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
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.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
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.
Anything street legal without a needing a special waiver for emissions.
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
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
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.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
Most of the financial regulators are former high level executives from Goldman Sachs...
Some are but most are demonstrably not. Many are financial industry insiders but that's by necessity. Do you really want an financial regulator who has no knowledge of the industry he/she is regulating? The only place to get people with the appropriate financial experience is from the finance industry.
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.
While I admire your faith in the court system, in truth the courts are woefully ill-prepared to deal with the sorts of issues the SEC and other regulating bodies deal with. The court system is sloooooowww, expensive and can only effectively deal with misconduct after it has occurred. The courts are a poor monitoring system. The court system also is not heavily staffed with financial experts who understand the issues involved. Trust me, you REALLY don't want financially illiterate judges deciding financial regulations.
The reason the industry insiders often end up as regulators is precisely because they are the only ones who really understand what is going on. Finance is really, really complicated. Yes it's not perfect but that's why the regulators are accountable to other bodies including the President and Congress. If anything the problem with the regulators isn't (usually) that they do poor quality work but rather that they aren't given enough resources to really do a great job. The SEC for instance is badly understaffed given it's mandate. If you really want to keep a better watch on the finance industry, lobby congress to increase funding to the SEC and other watchdog agencies.
It's going to end up being prosecuted in a court of law anyway and not solved by some magic regulation hand-waving.
Spoken like someone who has no experience whatsoever in the financial industry. I won't argue that all regulations are good or well enforced but relying on the court system alone to solve the issues that regulators deal with daily would be insanity. If you really want to screw up the financial system, get rid of the regulators. Our current financial mess is due in significant part to a lack of regulation.
The government doesn't have to do anything complicated. It just has to have the ability to strike fear into the hearts of the business community it's supposed to regulate.
This requires a few things: an independent media, which we don't have; a civically informed populace that takes it's democratic duties seriously, which we don't have; and a culture that values human dignity over profits, which we don't have.
In cultures that do have all of these things, government regulation works very well and fosters progress, since you don't have to constantly worry about getting screwed over, you don't have to wonder if you'll have access to medical care, or a good public school, or a good safety net to get you back on your feet if your fall ill, get in an accident, or whatever.
Clear and concise regulation with real penalties for breaking those regulations fosters competitive markets. Diminishing the government to the point where it can be bought and sold by businesses usually leads to fascism. The markets destroy themselves with greed, destabilize the economy (and eventually the whole society), and further concentrate wealth and power until you have a virtual oligarchy sprinkled with political theater.
It's not a race condition, is it?
I can't believe I'm the first one on this thread to make that joke. I'm not even a programmer.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
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