So i have the technical and tester background. i did my homework and when Toyota corporate assigned me an engineer to test the vehicle after it was totaled, i briefed him on what i wanted him to test, ie the ECU for software corruption and the air idle valve. Both areas were heavily mentioned on the NHSTA site for most models from 2000 on. My vehicle was not on the recall list. He showed up and put no power on the vehicle, and did not test what i prescribed. The accident happened in a hi EM environment. I feel the ECU is not shielded properly leading to software corruption.

When they sent me the test report they stated it was in a location that it was not in. i had a TV news team do the story so it is verifed.

When my insurance company wanted to test the ECU and air idle valve Toyota would not release the code.

So that tells you that Toyota is at fault and paying the fines to DC to get off. If they did not have a problem they would allow scrutiny which would lead to vindication.

A truly good software engineer will spot the flaws, but he/she will be one in a thousand.

Good luck all you ambulance chasers.

I would like to point out that Toyota is the #1 automobile manufacturer in the world now because of their relentless commitment to Lean Manufacturing techniques. Lean Manufacturing is all about eliminating waste in processes, and you have to wonder if they applied Lean principles to their software testing process. One of the tools of Lean Manufacturing is the Value Stream Map. The Value Stream Map identifies each unit of a process and measures how long each unit takes. In a manufacturing context it helps to predict how time/resources could and should be consumed during a given manufacturing cycle (order to customer). Software development can be viewed as a manufacturing process if we take Lean Manufacturing as a heuristic to solving the problem of inefficient software development projects. It would be interesting to apply the same techniques to the software testing craft to see if we learn anything new.

[James' Reply: Hi Mike, software development and testing is not a manufacturing process at all. It's a design process. Has Lean Manufacturing been applied to design? If so, how?

For instance, is a test that doesn't discover a bug just a "waste"? I don't think so. But what would eliminating waste mean in a test project?]

James, I liked this article. I may be crazy, but I went to the dealer and bought a new 2010 Prius today. I spent a lot of time last weekend researching every aspect I could read about the quality issues. After that, I’m pretty sure Toyota’s problems are exaggerated by about a factor of 10. Yeah, they’ve had some issues, but from what I read their failure rate is on par – or even less – than other car manufacturers. In other words, every make and model has issues. We’re just hearing about this one because it’s the trendy thing for the news to talk about. Next month it’ll be the brassiere bomber, Lindsay Lohan’s suicide, or how bread is evil because if you eat too much of it you’ll get fat.

And yes the shifter is fly-by-wire.

[James' Reply: I would buy a Prius, too, and here's why: those guys have to be sweating blood and bullets to analyze and fix this thing. If it turns out to be nothing, then they'll end up with a very well tested vehicle design. If it turns out to be a big problem, they'll do another recall. Either way, the problem, if it exists, is extremely rare.]

I am not saying that Toyota does not have a problem; and I am not saying they did everything they should have. What I AM saying is that at this point in time, it becomes difficult for outside observers to tell the fact from the fiction, and Toyota is directly in the line of fire for anyone who wants to try and sue them for this, exactly because it is, as of yet, seemingly impossible to replicate on demand, and relatively easy to “simulate”. Many bugs get this way, and stay this way a long time, not because of incompetent testing, but because they are just damned difficult to diagnose. But since the public, just like management oftentimes, does not understand or accept that fact, Toyota will get hung up as the poster child for incompetence, no matter what they do.

As to the point of people pre-flighting their cars, to some degree even that is not a terrible idea, but that is more than I intended. My intent simply was that they should understand them to the point of being able to control them as much as practical, even (especially?) in emergency situations. Personally, I am not positive if the shifter is mechanical or fly by wire…however, it would be good to know if anyone has tried it, because if it is fly by wire, and it fails to disengage the engine when the thing runs wild, it points to an even larger system failure than currently imagined, since presumptively the ability to shift gears should be independent of the throttle or brake. (I know, big and arguable presumption)

David

[James' Reply: I'll have sympathy for Toyota when their management stops pooh-pooing on reports of trouble. The testimony I saw before congress was classic dismissive management behavior.

They should have gone up there and simply said: "we're not satisfied with our testing and we won't be until these reports simply stop coming in. Here are the twenty-six things we are doing to investigate and fix the problem. Here is the panel of independent experts we've brought in to help us. We're not making any excuses. We're just working the problem."]

Last week, the big story was some guy hurtling down the freeway at 80 mph in a runaway Prius who had to call 911 to get help shutting the car down. Seriously?!?!

[James' Reply: It's possible that the guy was crazy. It's also possible that the software in the car went crazy. I read that the car's brakes had been worn down to nothing. That's doesn't sound consistent with a fellow who was NOT trying to stop his vehicle.

I once had trouble with my Saturn's brakes. I took the car in, and they told me they couldn't reproduce the problem. I had to take a mechanic out and show him. It turned out they had ignored one of the conditions I reported: that the problem only happened at very low speeds (less than 5 MPH). It turned out that I had a bad sensor in one of the wheels that was reporting a lock up of that wheel at low speeds, causing the antilock brake system to activate on a dry road, which obviously reduces braking power and caused me to slide through stop signs. They were pretty confident that the problem was all in my own head, the bastards, until I proved them wrong.]

Notice to all Prius drivers: You know that big stick looking thing you pull down to “D” to drive around? The one you push to “R” to back up? And “P” to park? It also has another setting…”N”, for neutral. If your Prius takes off on you, push the big stick thing to “N” and it will stop running away.

[James' Reply: Is that mechanically or logically coupled to the transmission. My understanding (I haven't researched any of this, so maybe I'm totally wrong) is that there is very little or nothing that is mechanically yoked. Isn't it all fly by wire? Is there a mechanically guaranteed way to stop the car, or does it depend on software and transistors that do the right things?

If there's a mechanically guaranteed way to stop the car, Toyota should really be telling people about it!]

Yeah, the engine will likely blow up, but Toyota is gonna buy you a new one, trust me. Better that than to be on the national news talking to 911 about your runaway Prius…that can’t be duplicated…that neither Toyota or the Federal Government can find anything wrong with, as of this morning…hmmm…or is it?

[James' Reply: What do you mean CAN'T be duplicated? How do YOU know it can't be duplicated? All you know is that they haven't yet duplicated it. But how did they try to duplicate it? Have they recreated all possible forms of electromagnetic interference? Have they recreated the physical condition of the brakes at the time (no, because they replaced the brakes). Have the recreated the heat, the battery charge, the state of the engine and the computers? How COULD they have done so?

I'd like to know what the log file in the car had recorded, though. Maybe Toyota needs to put a log more diagnostic logging into their vehicles.]

There are two points here…first, users do have some responsibility. If you are gonna hurl 2000 pounds of steel, plastic and glass down the freeway, you really should understand a little more than “As long as I keep the gas tank full it’s all good”. As a pilot, James, you know exactly what I am talking about. Yet, in our culture, we are all too happy to abdicate all responsibility to someone else.

[James' Reply: Now this is a bit weird. Are you saying that people should pre-flight their cars, and study the gear linkages? The guy was an older fellow wasn't he? A veteran driver, probably. Unless he was crazy, which is definitely possible, it seems to me he behaved reasonably. We don't know what he tried to do, but apparently he tried the brakes. He did a reasonable thing by calling 911 if his car was hurtling out of control-- so that his situation would be documented in case he ran off a cliff or something.]

Which brings me to my second point…when a big company suffers a major, public failure, a class of people known as sharks appear, smelling the deep pockets of blood in the water, and move in for their own little personal killing. And at that point, what hope does Toyota, or any other company, have of making sense of the totally bogus data the field is going to start providing to them. So I DO pity Toyota, at least a little. They may have missed many of the things you point out, but at the same time, they may have tried hard to get it right and just made a mistake; and then they went into damage control mode; and now, they are the target of a feeding frenzy, being driven at least in part by a media, culture, and government who is all too happy to serve them up as the next great piece of entertainment fodder.

[James' Reply: You can feel sorry for them a little, but not too much, until they show they are serious. The testimony I saw was not encouraging.]

So while this may be a lesson in all the ways testing should have been done but wasn’t, it should also be a cautionary tale of how we expect everyone else to get everything right, while we ourselves don’t.

David

[James' Reply: Look David, are you saying that Toyota really has a problem with it's cars, or not? If this is all bogus data from sharkies, then Toyota has great cars and they did get it right. If, however, they did not get it right, and their cars are actually occasionally careening out of control, then that is a very very bad thing, and we should see them acting aggressively not to deny the problem, but to embrace it and resolve it.

Toyota can spend $50 million to research this problem and it still will be cheap. In fact, if I were Toyota, I would be trying to use this situation to innovate and leap frog the competition: create a new design and testing process with state of the art EMI testing facilities, EMI shielding on all components, long period reliability testing through simulations, mathematical proofs of correctness (yes, I said it), all kinds of innovation.]