Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs

An anonymous reader writes "David Cummings, a programmer who worked on the Mars Pathfinder project, has written an interesting editorial in the L.A. Times encouraging Toyota to drop claims of software infallibility in their recent acceleration problems. He argues that embedded systems developers must program more defensively, and that companies should stop relying on software for safety. Quoting: 'If Toyota has indeed tested its software as thoroughly as it says without finding any bugs, my response is simple: Keep trying. Find new ways to instrument the software, and come up with more creative tests. The odds are that there are still bugs in the code, which may or may not be related to unintended acceleration. Until these bugs are identified, how can you be certain they are not related to sudden acceleration?'"

Comments

Another interesting statistic

[homer_s]

From here :

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

Some more data here

Re:Impossible to test

[zappepcs]

There are a couple of things that should be mentioned here. NASA has shown what it takes to make very small, very good code. Sure, they too have failures, but 'nearly' bug free code is quite expensive. Second, writing code is not quite like trying to create a hand crafted dashboard, if the dashboard fades, no one dies. Embedded software is quite a different beast from your normal desktop applications. When you add motion control and interaction with the code, it difference between them gets even more complex. Software in vehicles should be two things:

Open - let lots of folk see what could be wrong
Audited - audited to meet specific standards of safety and operation. Not quite the self-defeating government regulations, but more of a case by case issue: if the software has control or input to the control mechanism for the engine, braking system, suspension etc. it must meet minimum standard testing requirements. Any action that _could_ arbitrarily apply mechanical action must be tested and controlled beyond all reasonable testing/doubt. Everything should be tested, down to a pet chewing on the control cable harness.

Consumers are encouraged to think the vehicles they buy are safe and require no special knowledge of engineering or mechanics to operate. As long as they are given to think that, then passenger vehicles should be made to be just this way.

The problem for Toyota now is multifaceted. One, they have a PR shitstorm to deal with. Two, there is a dollar effect of this problem. Three, it's now on the shoulders of Toyota to get this part right for the rest of the passenger vehicle making industry.

It's possible that they might walk away from this fire with only minor long term burns and the reputation for building the safest vehicles. BUT, reading the article of this post and paying attention while doing so is necessary... IMO

Re:Boeing versus Airbus

[roman_mir]

A year ago I was watching one of Discovery programs I think and they had a couple of guys who supposedly implemented a piece of software, that would allow an airplane to fly and land safely if for some reason, while in the air, the tale would brake off or rudder would just stop working. They relied on a fly by wire airplane of-course and controlled the yaw with all other surfaces by applying very slight changes to the motion. They were saying a human could do this if extremely lucky, but software was able to do it almost always.

Just something to think about.