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Do Car Safety Problems Come From Outer Space?
Hugh Pickens writes "As electronic devices are made to perform more and more functions on smaller circuit chips, the systems become more sensitive and vulnerable to corruption from single event upsets. This is especially true of Toyota, which has led the auto industry in its widespread inclusion of electronic controls in the manufacture of their various car models. 'These circuit families store not just data, but their basic function electrically,' says Lloyd W. Massengill, director of engineering at the Vanderbilt Institute for Space and Defense Electronics at Vanderbilt University. 'In the unfortunate event of a particle flipping just the right bit, a circuit configured to carry out a benign action may be reprogrammed to carry out some unintended action.' Denise Chow writes in Live Science that some scientists are pointing to cosmic ray radiation as a plausible mechanism behind the sudden, unexplained acceleration reported to have occurred with the late model Toyotas."
"As the design of automobile systems continues to evolve from mechanical to electronic controls, relying more and more on various circuitry and chips, these electronic components may be vulnerable to being confounded by high-energy radiation writes Chow. Federal regulators were prompted to look into the possible role that cosmic rays played in Toyota's product recall fiasco after an anonymous tipster suggested the design of Toyota's microprocessors, software and memory chips could make them more vulnerable (PDF) to interference from radiation compared with other automakers. 'What's not known is what direction Toyota and other automakers are taking in terms of finding and correcting these issues,' says senior researcher Ewart Blackmore."
Indeed. There have been scares of this type before and virtually all cases have turned out to involve driver error or fraud. Confirmed cases of runaway acceleration are virtually non-existent. Before speculating on possible causes, we should find out if there is a real problem.
Just listened to the 911 call. The guy was only going 80 mph and couldn't even manage to answer the 911 operator verbally, but he was able to dial them? WTF? Was he on drugs or retarded or something? I could see freaking out if my car was doing 110 or something, but 80? I mean please, just put ur blinkers on, keep tapping the horn, and make it clear to the other vehicles that you have a problem. They will get out of your way, and 80mph on the highway shouldn't be difficult to drive.
Finally, what the hell is with people not knowing how to operate a multi-ton machine but doing it anyway? What kinda moron drives a car without knowing how to disengage or shut off the engine?
The man should lose his license for being incompetent!
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I've personally felt like the whole thing was a scam from the beginning. But I tend to be skeptical of government in general. I just feel like it's easier to run a smear campaign on Toyota than to fix the reputations of General Motors and Ford. But it seems like if the Toyotas have as many problems as the media makes it seem, we would actually see Toyotas having problems. Also, it didn't seem to affect sales. It seems like the only people who don't trust Toyota anymore are people who drive non-Toyota vehicles. It reminds me of the Linux users who say Windows crashes all the time. Also, I noticed recently millions of General Motors vehicles were recalled due to power steering problems. They didn't get nearly as much publicity as Toyota.