Hidden Software Bugs May Cause Sudden Acceleration
The typical new car has 20 million lines of code with as many as 2,000 bugs according to Dr Keith Armstrong, an electrical engineer. In a recent press conference hosted by ToyotaTruth.com, he and other experts opined that under certain conditions, one or more bugs may cause a car to suddenly accelerate. But finding the bug after the fact may be almost impossible.
One problem is that each car manufacturer considers its code proprietary ruling out collaborative efforts to improve the safety of the computerized controls on each manufacturer's code.
With regard to Toyota's throttle control systems, the engineeers noted that two circuits work in parallel in systems, but they use the same technology.The two independent circuits are on the same board. So if the same problem is introduced at exactly the same time to both circuits, such as moisture or electromagnetic interference, it could conceivably cause a problem in both circuits that the system wouldn't detect.
If such a duplicate fault occurred, Armstrong added, it also wouldn't be recorded by Toyota's Event Data Recorder, which relies on the same systems that could be malfunctioning.
In general, Armstrong was not pointing fingers specifically at Toyota, but rather at the entire auto industry. Over the last 10 years, he said, Ford has more complaints related to unintended acceleration than Toyota does.
