I think the biggest problem with software is that it can be perfectly safe and work OK in 99.9999% of all cases, and still contain deadly bugs that strike in ve

I think the biggest problem with software is that it can be perfectly safe and work OK in 99.9999% of all cases, and still contain deadly bugs that strike in very specific and difficult to reproduce circumstances. That the software works very well most of the time only adds to the belief that there must be another explanation for what happened (I think even Woz could reproduce the runaway accelerator bug in his Prius?) That a piece of software is widespread and works good most of the time simply can't be used to say whether the software is "safe". To say anything about that, you have to look at the process used to develop the software, and see whether that process has a good success rate of predicting and uncovering software bugs. If Toyotas code is as bad as this article makes it out to be and the certification standards are so poor, I won't be surprised if we see more cases like this in the future, although they will still be rare.