Huffington Post: Steve Parker: Is NHTSA Working for Toyota or To Find the Truth?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-parker/is-nhtsa-working-for-toyo_b_678148.html


Steve Parker

Journalist/Broadcaster covering the auto industry and auto racing for 35 years.
Posted: August 12, 2010 05:35 PM

Last week we asked, based on conclusions drawn by a Wall Street Journal auto industry reporter, if Toyota had been right along with their contention that "driver error," and not electronic gremlins, was the main culprit behind thousands of owner claims of "unintended acceleration." Not to mention the hundreds of injuries and even several deaths which are claimed to be the result of known problems in Toyota-built vehicles, cars and trucks both.

Readers responded with their own thoughts on what could now be called "the Toyota scandal." It appears that, among this blog's readers, at least, the majority of people responding felt there was something wrong with these Toyotas and that owners were possibly being left out in the cold with Toyota's claims of driver error.

A report in Tuesday's Automotive News, the world's daily publication of record for the auto industry, would seem to bolster the company's claims ... especially so, considering Toyota says their source for this information is from NHTSA, the US agency of record when it comes to automotive safety.

Here's what Automotive News said:

"Brakes weren't applied by drivers of Toyota vehicles in at least 35 of 58 crashes blamed on unintended acceleration, U.S. auto-safety regulators said after studying data recorders."


The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also saw no evidence of electronics-related causes for the accidents in reviewing the vehicle recorders, known as black boxes, the agency said today in a report to lawmakers.

The preliminary findings bolster Toyota's contentions that there's no evidence of flaws in electronic controls on its vehicles and that motorists in some cases confused the accelerator and brake pedals.

Toyota, the world's largest automaker, has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide in the past year for defects such as pedals that stuck or snagged on floor mats.

FULL story at link.

[AdHocSolver]

1. Everything I have read about the problem suggests it is computer related.

I worked many years with electronic hardware and computer software, as well as doing my own car repairs.

Strange and unexpected behavior that is difficult to troubleshoot points to computer malfunction, not mechanical malfunction.

I have seen system failures, especially intermittent failures where the problem occurs at random times and produces random results, many times over the years that took lots of time, and sometimes plain luck, to find and fix.

Mechanical failures can almost always be discovered.

If the data recorder mentioned in the post is fed from a centralized computer, it is of little value in determining the problem. If the computer is malfunctioning, it may not send a "brakes applied" signal to the recorder. Any information coming from the computer is suspect.

Here is Toyota's dilemma. Since the problems occurred in models of cars covering several years, they may never find a specific cause, or there may be different unrelated causes for the problem.

Ongoing production changes in hardware and software could mask or introduce glitches in the system. Finding a specific cause and "fixing" it could introduce new "bugs" in the system.

The real cause of the problems are due to the way the system is designed around a main computer that controls "everything".

A safer and smarter way to design computer systems for a car would be to make each function a separate computer module that "talks" to other modules over a network, and each module has a built in failsafe mode that reverts to a fallback default condition should it fail to receive appropriate signals from other modules in the system.

Such a design is also much easier to troubleshoot as problems can be localized and defective modules easily and cheaply replaced.

Also, some systems should have mechanical overrides should electronic systems fail, say, due to loss of electrical power caused by a short circuit.

Then there is the user interface. The design in the Lexus that requires the driver to press and hold a button for three seconds to shut off the engine is the dumbest "feature" I have ever heard of.

Any piece of equipment that could prove dangerous should have a means of shutting it down immediately and unambiguously should something go wrong.

There are two reasons why car companies, all of them, not just Toyota, design cars like they do today. First, it is cheaper to manufacture them. Second, it makes it more difficult for people to repair their own cars, and it is more expensive to repair them since you need specialized parts, tools, and equipment to do so.