Toyota's Killer Firmware

New submitter Smerta writes "On Thursday, a jury verdict found Toyota's ECU firmware defective, holding it responsible for a crash in which a passenger was killed and the driver injured. What's significant about this is that it's the first time a jury heard about software defects uncovered by a plaintiff's expert witnesses. A summary of the defects discussed at trial is interesting reading, as well the transcript of court testimony. 'Although Toyota had performed a stack analysis, Barr concluded the automaker had completely botched it. Toyota missed some of the calls made via pointer, missed stack usage by library and assembly functions (about 350 in total), and missed RTOS use during task switching. They also failed to perform run-time stack monitoring.' Anyone wonder what the impact will be on self-driving cars?"

Comments

Re:"Impact on self-driving cars?" - None

[neoritter]

It might change the programming language they decide to use though. Pick a language that's more stable at run-time like Ada (missile programming) etc.

Relevant paragraph

[michaelmalak]

2nd link, 5th paragraph:

In a nutshell, the team led by Barr Group found what the NASA team sought but couldn’t find: “a systematic software malfunction in the Main CPU that opens the throttle without operator action and continues to properly control fuel injection and ignition” that is not reliably detected by any fail-safe. To be clear, NASA never concluded software wasn’t at least one of the causes of Toyota’s high complaint rate for unintended acceleration; they just said they weren’t able to find the specific software defect(s) that caused unintended acceleration. We did.

Re:It is about time!!!

[c-A-d]

Any engineering project requires that the engineers have to answer for what they've done. The mantra is, "As an engineer, if you fuckup, someone dies." Every engineer, regardless of discipline, needs to understand this and if they don't, should consider going into Liberal Arts or something equally useless where the worst they can do is fuck up my food or drink order.

Re:Technology is hard and dangerous

[SethJohnson]

The metal is so much thicker on those old cars, we had to use a sledge hammer instead of a normal body work hammer to take the dent back out

I apologize if I'm stating the obvious here...

Most older products were over-built for durability because there were not methodologies for engineering minimum material for the required applications. Cars and other things were built with thicknesses of material that were tested and known to work. To reduce that thickness risked approaching an unknown threshold for failure. Trial-and-error was used where budgets allowed to reduce material, but this was an expensive process and in most cases the manufacturer chose to overbuild.

In more recent years, computer modeling has enabled engineers to load test structural designs so that the product can be built with the minimum amount of material required to satisfy the desired application. This benefits the producer, the consumer, and the scrap yard, while delivering overall efficiency.

Re:Technology is hard and dangerous

[MachDelta]

In a "serious accident", I'd wager my old Chrysler New Yorker against your crumple-zones any day of the week.

You'd lose that bet.
And likely only once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtxd27jlZ_g

Not only would I experience far lower acceleration forces than you

No, you'd be experiencing far greater acceleration forces, as if no portion of the car gives way and soaks up kinetic energy, a greater portion of it will be transferred to anything not bolted securely to the frame (eg: you).

I won't end up crumpled in my car's own crumple zone.

The cabin is under no circumstances a crumple zone. Engine and trunk compartments make great crumple zones. The cabin should be a vehicle's Waterloo.