Hacker News Reader

Comment by janice1999 | Hacker News Reader

janice1999

I also nominate the "Toyota Unintended Acceleration" issue. A lecturer friend of mine likes to reference these slides from the trial: https://www.safetyresearch.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ba...

View on HN

Toyota kept going on and on about how their software code wasn’t faulty, but analysts showed that it was so incredibly riddled with bugs that unintended acceleration was not only “in there”, but was hiding under a layer of literally(!) thousands of other critical bugs.

Did Toyota change their safety culture as a result?

Hah… no.

Can you please provide some links? As far as I know there are no credible references. Also, my whole family drives Toyotas for at least 40+ years, so I both have a real interest to know if that occurs, and I also have some anecdotal evidence it doesn't occur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration...

Check out page 40 onwards: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...

The code quality can be best described as criminally negligent, unsafe, spaghetti garbage with incorrect concurrency sprinkled on top for laughs.

This trial made no sense. Try stepping on your accelerator and brake at the same time and see what happens: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blame-game/id111938996....

1. There’s an identified mechanism by which the software could accelerate without the pedal depressed.

2. In my car, if I step gently on both pedals, they both take effect. (Which is reasonable: starting uphill is a thing.). If I step harder on both pedals, the car chimes at me and the motor output is reduced automatically.

In every car, the brake is much, much stronger than the accelerator, and easily overpowered by braking. Every one of these cases was simply a person who accidentally stepped on the gas, thinking it was the brake. If you ever feel like this is happening to you, pick your foot up and try again.

... and put your car in neutral and kill the engine by holding the start button.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com