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I don't see why an independent analysis commissioned by Toyota would be any more or less credible because Toyota paid for it than an analysis by an expert witne

I don't see why an independent analysis commissioned by Toyota would be any more or less credible because Toyota paid for it than an analysis by an expert witness paid for by a plaintiff in a civil suit. I should think they deserve equal scrutiny. Reading the transcript of the court proceedings, it sounded like Barr Group were able to induce a fault that could lead to an unintended acceleration, but the evidence that this fault actually happened was circumstantial. Also, I don't find the jury's decision against Toyota to be relevant, given that there are so many other elements that figure into the calculus of a jury decision. I can't fault Barr Group for trumpeting that they were a key expert witness in a successful trial of this magnitude—it's phenomenal advertising—but I don't see how it follows that their failure proposal is actually what happened (nor do I think that the Barr Group would say with certainty that it did happen).

tunesmith 11y ago
How would it be anything other than circumstantial that it "actually happened"? Those cars crashed and people died. You could make the same case about any bug; "I duplicated the behavior, but that doesn't mean it actually happened in the original bug report". That kind of developer comment would raise eyebrows. Toyota's original defense was that it was user error because unintended acceleration couldn't happen; they blamed it entirely on driver error. They were making a "forall" argument, and all Barr had to do was show an "exists". He did. Toyota was completely wrong.
- lambdaelite 11y ago
  > How would it be anything other than circumstantial that it "actually happened"? Because the fault could trigger a DTC. Barr's argument was that the right kind of bit flip event could cause a fault and it would not be logged as a DTC. The beauty of Barr's theory is that it leaves no evidence if it was the cause of a real-world accident. The plaintiffs successfully argued that Barr's theory was the most plausible explanation for the accident, not that it was the cause. > You could make the same case about any bug; "I duplicated the behavior, but that doesn't mean it actually happened in the original bug report". I think this analogy is misplaced, here, there would be no bug report other than "the system crashed" (no pun intended). In which case, your statement would be accurate and proper. > Toyota's original defense was that it was user error because unintended acceleration couldn't happen; they blamed it entirely on driver error. They were making a "forall" argument, and all Barr had to do was show an "exists". He did. Toyota was completely wrong. Toyota's defense was that user error was the most likely explanation; the plaintiff via Barr argued that a software defect was the most likely. The plaintiff prevailed, but that has no bearing on what actually (or likely) happened.

tunesmith 11y ago

How would it be anything other than circumstantial that it "actually happened"? Those cars crashed and people died. You could make the same case about any bug; "I duplicated the behavior, but that doesn't mean it actually happened in the original bug report". That kind of developer comment would raise eyebrows. Toyota's original defense was that it was user error because unintended acceleration couldn't happen; they blamed it entirely on driver error. They were making a "forall" argument, and all Barr had to do was show an "exists". He did. Toyota was completely wrong.

lambdaelite 11y ago
> How would it be anything other than circumstantial that it "actually happened"? Because the fault could trigger a DTC. Barr's argument was that the right kind of bit flip event could cause a fault and it would not be logged as a DTC. The beauty of Barr's theory is that it leaves no evidence if it was the cause of a real-world accident. The plaintiffs successfully argued that Barr's theory was the most plausible explanation for the accident, not that it was the cause. > You could make the same case about any bug; "I duplicated the behavior, but that doesn't mean it actually happened in the original bug report". I think this analogy is misplaced, here, there would be no bug report other than "the system crashed" (no pun intended). In which case, your statement would be accurate and proper. > Toyota's original defense was that it was user error because unintended acceleration couldn't happen; they blamed it entirely on driver error. They were making a "forall" argument, and all Barr had to do was show an "exists". He did. Toyota was completely wrong. Toyota's defense was that user error was the most likely explanation; the plaintiff via Barr argued that a software defect was the most likely. The plaintiff prevailed, but that has no bearing on what actually (or likely) happened.