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by Dru89 3132 days ago
I thought the unintended acceleration issues had been largely disproven as user error.

That is, many other brands of cars had been reported to have the same issues by drivers. And basically a driver was put into a stressful situation, thought they were hitting the brakes, but were actually hitting the gas. Then, panicking that they can't stop the car, hit the "brakes" harder, exacerbating the problem.
3 comments
hnrodey 3132 days ago
Malcom Gladwell goes over this story on his Revisionist History podcast.

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/08-blame-game

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Dru89 3132 days ago
This was what originally led me to do some research on the topic. I really thought the podcast was well done.
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mediocrejoker 3132 days ago
I don't think this is true. If you google for toyota and misra (a C coding standard for safety-critical systems) you can find many reports on an audit that was performed on their code and the _many thousands_ of violations that were found.
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Dru89 3132 days ago
There may be a bit of both at work here, because I remember seeing a lot of issues with hacking the Prius at Defcon[0], but I vaguely recall the SUA incidents being mostly related to as pedal misapplication.

I know Wikipedia isn't exactly a great primary source here, but:

> From 2002 to 2009 there were many defect petitions made to the NHTSA regarding unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles, but many of them were determined to be caused by pedal misapplication, and the NHTSA noted that there was no statistical significance showing that Toyota vehicles had more SUA incidents than other manufacturers.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration...

In any case, I believe companies can definitely be guilty of criminal negligence (and Toyota did a lot of bad things during their SUA crisis). But I think the use of SUA in the comment I originally responded to sort of misrepresents the situation and mostly spreads a lot of FUD around self-driving cars.

[0]: https://www.engadget.com/2013/07/28/auto-hacked-ford-toyota-...

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zardo 3132 days ago
IIRC Toyota did have a real problem with clearance between the accelerator pedal and (their own aftermarket parts) floor mats. It was possible for the pedal to be wedged against the floor mat.

I don't think that was conclusively shown to the cause of any of the incedents though.

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