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Toyota's Engineering Process and the General Public
Doofus writes "The Washington Post has published in today's paper an article titled 'Why it's so hard for Toyota to find out what's wrong' by Frank Ahrens on the Toyota situation and the difficulties of adequately conveying to Senators and Representatives — most of whom are non-technical — the debugging process. Ahrens interviews Giorgio Rizzoni, an 'expert in failure analysis' at Ohio State, who describes the iterations of testing that NHTSA will likely inflict on the Toyota sample cars they have purchased, and then moves into the realm of software and systems verification: 'He explained that each vehicle contains "layers of computer code that may be added from one model year to next" that control nearly every system, from acceleration to braking to stability. Rizzoni said this software is rigorously tested, but he added: "It is well-known in our community that there is no scientific, firm way of actually completely verifying and validating software."' Ahrens ends the piece with a quote from a 2009 LA Times interview with former UCLA psychology professor Richard Schmidt about how user reports are often unreliable: 'When the driver says they have their foot on the brake, they are just plain wrong. The human motor system is not perfect, and it doesn't always do what it is told.'"
Toyota is currently planning an event to challenge evidence presented by professor David W. Gilbert that called into question Toyota's electronic throttle system.
Sorry, but if you have enough time to call 911 you have enough time to stop the car. Put it into neutral, stop the car and turn the engine off. I only drive with manual transmission, but I read putting it to neutral would work with automatic as well. I guess to people who don't drive stick shifting to neutral might not be as obvious, but that's no excuse for not knowing how to handle a car in emergency situations. The "stuck accelerator" scenario is one I learned in driving school along with other, much more common problems.
For years, Toyota have built cars with mushy handling and overboosted steering. In other words, cars for people who hate driving, and would rather be doing anything other than driving, like talking on their cell phone, applying makeup, sending text messages, sleeping, or reading. At the same time, they have touted their reputation for quality as being infallible. Of course they're going to be blamed for anything that goes wrong with the car--by making vehicles that cater to distracted and indifferent drivers, they're enabling and encouraging exactly that type of behaviour.