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Toyota accelerator-gate is largely a farce. Almost all of the people involved with Toyota unintended acceleration were over the age of 65 and had the poorly des

Toyota accelerator-gate is largely a farce. Almost all of the people involved with Toyota unintended acceleration were over the age of 65 and had the poorly designed loose floor mats in their cars. Even if they had perfect readable John Carmack tier coding they still would have lost.

01100011 5y ago
Sure but that's not related to the point I'm making. The point is that not following software design best practices can leave you open to liability, or at least put you in such a weak legal position that you are compelled to settle. If/when Tesla gets hauled into court over its software flaws, any lack of adherence to best practices will make the company appear negligent.
- thoughtstheseus 5y ago
  This is a risk adverse culture then. Tesla is spending gobs of money specifically on building safer if not the safest cars out there.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    How do you square that with them removing sensors from their cars and going all-in on doing self-driving exclusively using vision? If they were so passionate about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion.
    - matz1 5y ago
      They specifically mention because camera is better than radar. It gives more information than radar. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380796939151704071?s=19 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380796939151704071?s=19
    - tantony 5y ago
      > If they were so passionate about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion. That's your opinion. They have shown data where the information from radar was of a lower quality than what their vision stack was providing (e.g. lack of vertical resolution). Watch their AI day webcast for examples. Their current vision-only stack has been validated with LIDAR ground-truth data.
      - heeen2 5y ago
        Is anyone arguing for replacing vision with lidar and radar instead of combining it?
        tantony 5y ago
        If the radar data conflicts with what vision is saying, which one do they trust? They have shown that their vision stack has surpassed what they can do with radar. So "fusing" that data in only makes it worse when it gives conflicting information.
        pas 5y ago
        Sensors are obviously important, but it doesn't really matter if two sensors conflict, the important thing is which one is consistent with their running model. So far their biggest problem is that they allow flicker. That's why sometimes the software picks the wrong lines. (Of course this is a very hard problem. Our brain conveniently smooths over sensory changes for us, because that's how our everyday reality is. Things don't flicker in and out of existence, nor does a car suddenly appear as a different thing, then switches back.) And if it turns out the sensor(s) failed, it has to be able to handle that too.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    > building safer if not the safest cars out there Unless the car loses power and catches fire. Then you can't open the fucking doors [0]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man-died-burning-tesla-because-its-futuristic-doors-wouldnt-open-lawsuit-alleges/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man-died-...
    - panick21 5y ago
      Using 1 off cases based on unsubstantiated information in a lawsuit is not a persuasive argument for overall safety.
      - karottenreibe 5y ago
        It's certainly a better argument than the GPs claim of "the safest cars out there" with 0 evidence given to substantiate that. I think it fair to refute such an unsubstantiated claim with a reported instance where safety was not maintained as can reasonably be expected.
        panick21 5y ago
        Tesla cars have the highest safety ratings in the world and they have the the best active safety features and complete fleet compliance with their whole fleet for new standard of active safety features (literally the only company that does have that). This is literally just the basic fact of the situation. If you want to disagree with literally every state safety agency in the world, then you are the one who needs to come up with real evidence.
radicalbyte 5y ago
It literally took me years to understand it - how can you accelerate by accident? Until someone mentioned that all of these cars were automatics. But every automatic I've ever driven (not many - I prefer a clutch) moves forward unless you're pushing the break in. In the rest state, it's in motion. The problem isn't Toyota, the problem is a broken system.
- mpyne 5y ago
  That's a mechanical side effect of the torque converter used in automatics, which even at engine idle with no acceleration input is able to transfer power to the drivetrain. The Toyota case was an instance of the car's engine control software unexpectedly commanding acceleration not requested by the user. In principle it could happen on a manual car as well, but most of Toyota's vehicles in the U.S. are automatics.
- gedy 5y ago
  People panic and jam the wrong (or both) pedals. (There are quite a few people who use two feet to drive automatics, one foot for break, other for gas..)
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > There are quite a few people who use two feet to drive automatics They are very irritating to drive behind. Some seem to keep pressure on the brake pedal, and the brake lights stay on as they accelerate. When they slow it takes longer to realise they are braking as the lights have been solidly on.
    - frosted-flakes 5y ago
      Are you sure they're not just driving a manual transmission car? I can keep my foot lightly on the brake and apply the clutch to accelerate, without touching the accelerator pedal (diesel engine has a lot of low-end torque). Not that I do this in practice, except in drive-through lines just for the fun of it. In first gear I can reach 8 km/h, but it's possible to get all the way to fifth gear while idling (takes a long time though).
wrycoder 5y ago
Easy to do. I stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake once. First impulse is to step harder, until you realize what’s going on. If your realization is slow, bad things can happen. If bad things happen, the tendency is to blame someone else.
- andi999 5y ago
  One solid step on the accelerator easily let's bad things happen below 1s.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jcampbell1 5y ago
I worked for ford many years ago and I remember a really funny conversation between young engineers and MBA types. The issue was the Lincoln Towncar was designed to have extremely low pedal pressure because that is what the old buyers liked. Combine old people with limited hearing, no pedal pressure, and a quiet cabin it was a perfect recipe for old people to shift and send the car through the garage wall. Lol. The classic issue of when customers want something stupid, do you build it?
WalterBright 5y ago
The pedals are close together in my car, and a couple times I have hit the accelerator rather than the break. But I knew immediately what was wrong and adjusted.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Not entirely a farce. The PCM (engine controller) that a university audit got access to had 12,000 global variables. Their conclusion was it was not possible to prove either way. There was a definitely real issue with floor mats getting the pedal stuck. I don’t know enough background on it past the audit that was done.
rstuart4133 5y ago
I followed the accelerator-gate thing fairly closely, and I came out pretty convinced it was a computer failure. If it wasn't Toyota's floor mats were many times more likely to jam the accelerator than any other make or model. There was a plausible root cause - a bit flip in the CPU. It was proved such flipping the right bit would cause uncontrolled acceleration that characterised each event. I don't agree Toyota was guilty of shoddy work, or cost cutting. At worst, there were guilty of working some fairly shitty, hard to support code. (Someone below mentions 10,000 global variables.) If anything that shitty code just proves how dedicated Toyota was to testing something until until all the safety related bugs are gone, because despite some horrid kludges like replying on watch dogs resetting the thing when it got stuck and a reset so fast most people wouldn't notice it, despite the intense scrutiny of the code no one every found a safety issue with it. Toyota was well aware of a electrically noisy area like a engine bay could cause bit lips, and defended against it. Every variable was stored in two places in RAM, and on use they were always read and compared, and if they differed it was reset. Sadly for Toyota they used a proprietary ECU and OS provided by NEC. NEC didn't let their customers look at their proprietary stuff. NEC didn't defend against bit flips. And it turned out a bit flop in a task ready bit could cause that task to never be scheduled again. If that task was supposed to turn off the cruise control acceleration, then bingo. I have no idea what changes Toyota made in response to this mess, but if I was to hazard a guess it would be when it comes to software, they demand their supplies open their source to them.

01100011 5y ago

Sure but that's not related to the point I'm making. The point is that not following software design best practices can leave you open to liability, or at least put you in such a weak legal position that you are compelled to settle. If/when Tesla gets hauled into court over its software flaws, any lack of adherence to best practices will make the company appear negligent.

thoughtstheseus 5y ago
This is a risk adverse culture then. Tesla is spending gobs of money specifically on building safer if not the safest cars out there.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  How do you square that with them removing sensors from their cars and going all-in on doing self-driving exclusively using vision? If they were so passionate about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion.
  - matz1 5y ago
    They specifically mention because camera is better than radar. It gives more information than radar. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380796939151704071?s=19 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380796939151704071?s=19
  - tantony 5y ago
    > If they were so passionate about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion. That's your opinion. They have shown data where the information from radar was of a lower quality than what their vision stack was providing (e.g. lack of vertical resolution). Watch their AI day webcast for examples. Their current vision-only stack has been validated with LIDAR ground-truth data.
    - heeen2 5y ago
      Is anyone arguing for replacing vision with lidar and radar instead of combining it?
      - tantony 5y ago
        If the radar data conflicts with what vision is saying, which one do they trust? They have shown that their vision stack has surpassed what they can do with radar. So "fusing" that data in only makes it worse when it gives conflicting information.
        pas 5y ago
        Sensors are obviously important, but it doesn't really matter if two sensors conflict, the important thing is which one is consistent with their running model. So far their biggest problem is that they allow flicker. That's why sometimes the software picks the wrong lines. (Of course this is a very hard problem. Our brain conveniently smooths over sensory changes for us, because that's how our everyday reality is. Things don't flicker in and out of existence, nor does a car suddenly appear as a different thing, then switches back.) And if it turns out the sensor(s) failed, it has to be able to handle that too.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > building safer if not the safest cars out there Unless the car loses power and catches fire. Then you can't open the fucking doors [0]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man-died-burning-tesla-because-its-futuristic-doors-wouldnt-open-lawsuit-alleges/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man-died-...
  - panick21 5y ago
    Using 1 off cases based on unsubstantiated information in a lawsuit is not a persuasive argument for overall safety.
    - karottenreibe 5y ago
      It's certainly a better argument than the GPs claim of "the safest cars out there" with 0 evidence given to substantiate that. I think it fair to refute such an unsubstantiated claim with a reported instance where safety was not maintained as can reasonably be expected.
      - panick21 5y ago
        Tesla cars have the highest safety ratings in the world and they have the the best active safety features and complete fleet compliance with their whole fleet for new standard of active safety features (literally the only company that does have that). This is literally just the basic fact of the situation. If you want to disagree with literally every state safety agency in the world, then you are the one who needs to come up with real evidence.

radicalbyte 5y ago

It literally took me years to understand it - how can you accelerate by accident? Until someone mentioned that all of these cars were automatics. But every automatic I've ever driven (not many - I prefer a clutch) moves forward unless you're pushing the break in. In the rest state, it's in motion. The problem isn't Toyota, the problem is a broken system.

mpyne 5y ago
That's a mechanical side effect of the torque converter used in automatics, which even at engine idle with no acceleration input is able to transfer power to the drivetrain. The Toyota case was an instance of the car's engine control software unexpectedly commanding acceleration not requested by the user. In principle it could happen on a manual car as well, but most of Toyota's vehicles in the U.S. are automatics.
gedy 5y ago
People panic and jam the wrong (or both) pedals. (There are quite a few people who use two feet to drive automatics, one foot for break, other for gas..)
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > There are quite a few people who use two feet to drive automatics They are very irritating to drive behind. Some seem to keep pressure on the brake pedal, and the brake lights stay on as they accelerate. When they slow it takes longer to realise they are braking as the lights have been solidly on.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Are you sure they're not just driving a manual transmission car? I can keep my foot lightly on the brake and apply the clutch to accelerate, without touching the accelerator pedal (diesel engine has a lot of low-end torque). Not that I do this in practice, except in drive-through lines just for the fun of it. In first gear I can reach 8 km/h, but it's possible to get all the way to fifth gear while idling (takes a long time though).

wrycoder 5y ago

Easy to do. I stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake once. First impulse is to step harder, until you realize what’s going on. If your realization is slow, bad things can happen. If bad things happen, the tendency is to blame someone else.

andi999 5y ago
One solid step on the accelerator easily let's bad things happen below 1s.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jcampbell1 5y ago

I worked for ford many years ago and I remember a really funny conversation between young engineers and MBA types. The issue was the Lincoln Towncar was designed to have extremely low pedal pressure because that is what the old buyers liked. Combine old people with limited hearing, no pedal pressure, and a quiet cabin it was a perfect recipe for old people to shift and send the car through the garage wall. Lol. The classic issue of when customers want something stupid, do you build it?

WalterBright 5y ago

The pedals are close together in my car, and a couple times I have hit the accelerator rather than the break. But I knew immediately what was wrong and adjusted.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Not entirely a farce. The PCM (engine controller) that a university audit got access to had 12,000 global variables. Their conclusion was it was not possible to prove either way. There was a definitely real issue with floor mats getting the pedal stuck. I don’t know enough background on it past the audit that was done.

rstuart4133 5y ago

I followed the accelerator-gate thing fairly closely, and I came out pretty convinced it was a computer failure. If it wasn't Toyota's floor mats were many times more likely to jam the accelerator than any other make or model. There was a plausible root cause - a bit flip in the CPU. It was proved such flipping the right bit would cause uncontrolled acceleration that characterised each event. I don't agree Toyota was guilty of shoddy work, or cost cutting. At worst, there were guilty of working some fairly shitty, hard to support code. (Someone below mentions 10,000 global variables.) If anything that shitty code just proves how dedicated Toyota was to testing something until until all the safety related bugs are gone, because despite some horrid kludges like replying on watch dogs resetting the thing when it got stuck and a reset so fast most people wouldn't notice it, despite the intense scrutiny of the code no one every found a safety issue with it. Toyota was well aware of a electrically noisy area like a engine bay could cause bit lips, and defended against it. Every variable was stored in two places in RAM, and on use they were always read and compared, and if they differed it was reset. Sadly for Toyota they used a proprietary ECU and OS provided by NEC. NEC didn't let their customers look at their proprietary stuff. NEC didn't defend against bit flips. And it turned out a bit flop in a task ready bit could cause that task to never be scheduled again. If that task was supposed to turn off the cruise control acceleration, then bingo. I have no idea what changes Toyota made in response to this mess, but if I was to hazard a guess it would be when it comes to software, they demand their supplies open their source to them.