[snom370]

While I agree that the media and politicians are now feasting on Toyotas failures, the fact is that Toyota really botched this. Had they taken the reports seriously earlier none of this would have happened, and lives could have been spared. Apparently they never thought this story could spiral out of control.

People seem to forget that this only happened until after Toyota had repeated recalls, each promising to fix the problem.

Is there a ghost in the machine? I don't know, Woz certainly seems to think so. Replacing floor mats and then gas pedals seems awfully like what happened with the Therac 25 radiation overdoses in the 80s.

(The Therac 25 manufacturer first added an extra hardware switch to the radiation therapy machine and claimed it was "an order of magnitude safer". When more people died, the quick emergency fix was to remove the "up" button from the VT100 console.)