Stack Overflow Could Explain Toyota Vehicles' Unintended Acceleration

New submitter robertchin writes "Michael Barr recently testified in the Bookout v. Toyota Motor Corp lawsuit that the likely cause of unintentional acceleration in the Toyota Camry may have been caused by a stack overflow. Due to recursion overwriting critical data past the end of the stack and into the real time operating system memory area, the throttle was left in an open state and the process that controlled the throttle was terminated. How can users protect themselves from sometimes life endangering software bugs?"

Comments

Re:Live in a cave

[lgw]

More like: stop confusing the break and gas pedals.

It seems like every 5 years or so we have a wave of "unintended acceleration" incidents that tarnish some manufacturer. A few years later when it's all gone through the courts, it's been "driver pedal misapplication" every time, a.k.a. "controlled flight into terrain". Sure, it's possible this is the first real acceleration bug, but I'm skeptical. When drivers claim "I was stepping on the brake really hard, but the car just launched forward", I'm incredibly skeptical (some of the Prius claims weren't this, though).

Will such a bug happen eventually? I think so - the more complexity there is, the more room for "oops". Self-driving cars could misbehave in all sorts of new and exciting ways. Likely still safer than a drunk driver, though.