Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Intermittent Electrical Contact Resistance as a Contributory Factor in the Loss of Automobile Speed Control Functional Integrity




Intermittent Electrical Contact Resistance as a Contributory Factor in the Loss of Automobile Speed Control Functional Integrity


For three decades, sudden acceleration (SA) incidents have been reported, where automobiles accelerate without warning. These incidents are often diagnosed as no fault found. Investigators, who follow the line of diagnostic reasoning from the 1989 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) SA report, tend to conclude that SAs are caused by driver pedal error. This paper reviews the diagnostic process in the NHTSA report and finds that: 1) it assumes that an intermittent electronic malfunction should be reproducible either through in-vehicle or laboratory bench tests without saying why and 2) the consequence of this assumption, for which there appears to be no forensic precedent, is to recategorize possible intermittent electronic failures as proven to be nonelectronic. Showing that the supposedly inescapable conclusions of the NHTSA report concerning electronic malfunctions are without foundation opens the way for this paper to discuss electronic intermittency as a potential factor in SA incidents. It then reports a simple practical experiment that shows how mechanically induced electrical contact intermittencies can generate false speed signals that an automobile speed control system may accept as true and that do not trigger any diagnostic fault codes. Since the generation of accurate speed signals is essential for the proper functioning of a number of other automobile safety-critical control systems, the apparent ease with which false speed signals can be generated by vibration of a poor electrical contact is obviously a matter of general concern. Various ways of reducing the likelihood of SAs are discussed, including electrical contact improvements to reduce the likelihood of generating false speed signals, improved battery maintenance, and the incorporation of an independent fail-safe that reduces engine power in an emergency, such as a kill switch.

VIDEO ON LINK
Mechanically-induced intermittency in speed sensor connections causes false speed signals, may result in loss of vehicle speed control and may contribute to some sudden acceleration incidents.

Published in:

Access, IEEE  (Volume:2 )


http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=6777269&punumber%3D6287639


Posted by
Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Toyota, Lexus, Pontiac Vibe Air Bag Recalls



If your vehicle is included in this RECALL, please have it corrected! 






Please click on the following NHTSA Campaign ID links to view the recall information.
NHTSA Campaign ID Number :15V286
Manufacturer :Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing
Make / Model Years :LEXUS / 2002-2007
PONTIAC / 2003-2007
TOYOTA / 2002-2007
Subject :Passenger Side Front Air Bag Inflator may Rupture
Thank you,
Recalls Subscription Team
Office of Defects Investigation (ODI)
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)

To file a vehicle safety-related complaint, please go online to our File a Complaint web page, or call us toll-free at 1-888-327-4236.
To find out more about NHTSA, please go to the Safercar.gov website or call our Vehicle Safety Hotline toll-free at 1-888-327-4236.

If you have questions regarding these e-mails, please go to the NHTSA Contact web page.





close RECALL Subject : Passenger Side Front Air Bag Inflator may Rupture


Report Receipt Date: MAY 13, 2015 
NHTSA Campaign Number: 15V286000 
Component(s): AIR BAGS 
Potential Number of Units Affected: 1,069,055 


All Products Associated with this Recall expand

Details close

10 Associated Documents expand




Please click on the following NHTSA Campaign ID links to view the recall information.
NHTSA Campaign ID Number :15V285
Manufacturer :Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing
Make / Model Years :LEXUS / 2002-2007
PONTIAC / 2003-2007
TOYOTA / 2002-2007
Subject :Passenger Side Front Air Bag Inflator may Rupture
Thank you,
Recalls Subscription Team
Office of Defects Investigation (ODI)
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)

To file a vehicle safety-related complaint, please go online to our File a Complaint web page, or call us toll-free at 1-888-327-4236.
To find out more about NHTSA, please go to the Safercar.gov website or call our Vehicle Safety Hotline toll-free at 1-888-327-4236.

If you have questions regarding these e-mails, please go to the NHTSA Contact web page.


RECALL Subject : Passenger Side Front Air Bag Inflator may Rupture


Report Receipt Date: MAY 13, 2015
NHTSA Campaign Number: 15V285000
Component(s): AIR BAGS
Potential Number of Units Affected: 1,973,468 

All Products Associated with this Recall expand

Details close

10 Associated Documents expand




Posted by
Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Hilliard Reports Judge Denies Toyota New Trial, Affirms Verdict: $14,062,483.02






Hilliard Reports Judge Denies Toyota New Trial, Affirms Verdict: $14,062,483.02


CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas, June 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Judge Montgomery of the District Court of Minnesota issued an Order affirming the jury's award in a case involving a defective Toyota Camry that has been pending for the past five years which resulted in the death of three individuals and a man spending nearly three years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
On August 5, 2010, Koua Fong Lee, a Hmong immigrant, was released from prison after serving two and a half years of an eight-year prison sentence, wrongfully convicted of criminal vehicular homicide. Mr. Lee and his family were involved in a car accident on June 10, 2006 after a trip home from a family celebration at church turned deadly. Upon exiting the highway onboard his 1996 Toyota Camry, Mr. Lee's brakes failed, causing a violent rear-end collision that led to the death of three passengers in another vehicle and seriously injured two others. Mr. Lee's vehicle experienced sudden unintended acceleration caused by a design defect in Toyota's fleet. While Toyota had kept consumers and the public in the dark about prior incidents of sudden unintended acceleration, Mr. Lee was nonetheless forced to spend over two years in prison, until a new trial was granted to prove that Toyota's design defect was the true cause of the deadly accident. Upon this showing the State had no other recourse but to drop all charges against Mr. Lee.
On February 3, 2015, in a subsequent civil trial, a jury found that Toyota was liable for design defects and awarded a total of $11.4million—the single largest verdict against Toyota for sudden unintended acceleration.
In an effort to avoid the multi-million dollar award, on March 4, 2015, Toyota asked the Court to declare that the Toyota Camry involved in the accident did not have a design defect or to grant the automaker a new trial— alleging there was no evidence presented at trial to support the finding that the accident was caused by a design defect. This is not the first time the auto giant seeks to dodge the record-setting jury award. On February 17, Toyota asked the Court to reduce the jury verdict, alleging that Mr. Lee should contribute $4 million to the payment since the jury found him to be 40 percent at fault.
In the 67-page Opinion, Judge Montgomery declared, "The jury deliberated for five days before reaching its unanimous verdict.  The Court is convinced the jury discharged their duties diligently and with care.  The verdict did not result in a miscarriage of justice warranting a new trial."
"The jury reached the right decision when it found for Koua.  And the Judge reached the right decision when she affirmed the jury's award," said Bob Hilliard, Founding Partner at Hilliard Munoz Gonzales, LLP, who took-on Toyota to remedy Mr. Lee's unjust conviction and who continues to fight on his behalf.  "The tragedy that cuts the deepest is an innocent man sat in prison for over two years while a car company, knowing he was innocent, continued to make billions while cowardly refusing to admit the truth of the defect. Today justice was affirmed and the Lees, as well as the other innocent victims, have finally won!"
ABOUT HMG     http://www.hmglawfirm.com/
Hilliard Munoz Gonzales LLP (HMG) specializes in mass torts, personal injury, product liability, commercial and business litigation, and wrongful death. Hilliard Munoz Gonzales LLP has been successfully representing clients in the United States and Mexico since 1986. Bob Hilliard obtained the Largest Verdict in the country in 2012 and the #1 verdict in Texas in 2013.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hilliard-reports-judge-denies-toyota-new-trial-affirms-verdict--1406248302-300099528.html





Posted by
Labels: , , , , , ,

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Route 44 Toyota: You've taught me more than you know!





Route 44 Toyota denied the existence of a problem with my BRAND NEW TOYOTA, yet could adequately tamper with the vehicle to change the mileage! Curious! 




To date, TOYOTA, et al have spent.....is it 6 times the value of my BRAND NEW TOYOTA? 



Next week....another stack of paperwork that will add to the meaningless pile....



....more forests destroyed! 


.....The LEMON LADY refused to drive her FUNKY TOYOTA! 



......others are SAFE! 




 Some TOYOTA drivers....are not so lucky! 








PLEASE READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE HAD TO SAY INCLUDING WHISTLE BLOWER BETSY BENJAMINSON & ACTIVIST CHARLENE BLAKE: 


Charlene M. Blake (@charleneblake)
Expose 'em, #Toyota whistleblower, Betsy Benjaminson! #Bob #Hilliard, product liability attorney, GET #CROOKS GOOD!betsybenjaminson.blogspot.com

Download the Twitter app



The Queue--55 GM lawyers and others to be deposed by "Bulldog" Hilliard & Co.












Posted by
Labels: , , , , ,

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Grey Toyota Camry kills pedestrian, injures others



Do you suppose people suddenly became STUPID? 
Have there ever been so many out-of-control vehicles in history? 

 Do you think it might be the vehicle? 
How come TOYOTAS top the list for out-of-control vehicles? 


Don't ya wonder? 




Yonge-Empress crash: 62-year-old behind wheel during fatal collision

1 pedestrian killed, 3 others injured after driver loses control at uptown intersection

CBC News Posted: Jun 12, 2015

Police say a 62-year-old woman was behind the wheel of the grey Toyota that lost control on Thursday afternoon and struck four pedestrians.
Police say a 62-year-old woman was behind the wheel of the grey Toyota that lost control on Thursday afternoon and struck four pedestrians. (Mike Wise/CBC)

Toronto police say a 62-year-old woman was behind the wheel of a car that careened into several pedestrians, killing one, on Thursday near the intersection of Yonge Street and Empress Avenue.
No charges have been laid at this time, but police say the investigation into the horrific crash is ongoing and they are looking for witnesses.
Police said the woman was eastbound on Park Home Avenue, which turns into Empress Avenue east of Yonge Street, when she side-swiped a silver SUV and continued into the intersection.
Police said the woman's car, a grey Toyota Camry, then struck four pedestrians on the east side of Yonge Street before mounting a curb and hitting a concrete embankment, tree and then a parked SUV.
One witness told CBC News that the woman's car appeared to accelerate as it moved northeast through the intersection, though police haven't released details.
The female driver suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the crash and was taken to hospital.
Video also emerged Friday of witnesses frantically performing CPR on one of the pedestrians who had been struck. Another injured man lay on the concrete nearby.
Police haven't released the name of the pedestrian who was killed.
The pedestrian's death is Toronto's 29th traffic fatality of 2015. 


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/yonge-empress-crash-62-year-old-behind-wheel-during-fatal-collision-1.3111847


Posted by
Labels: , , ,

Thursday, June 4, 2015

The heart of your Toyota has code so bad its embarrassing, and potentially life threatening





The heart of your Toyota has code so bad its embarrassing, and potentially life threatening

You would imagine that the code that runs your car, and controls all the safety functions would be meticulous. After all lives, money and reputations depend on it. Not so say NASA programmers who examined the code in a 2002 Toyota Camry. Its awful. Think of that when you are commuting to work next. For example a global variable is any piece of software anywhere in the system can get to that number and read it or write it.) The academic standard is zero. Toyota had more than 10,000 global variables.

Michael Barr, a well-respected embedded software specialist, spent more than 20 months reviewing Toyota’s source code at one of five cubicles in a hotel-sized room, supervised by security guards, who ensured that entrants brought no paper in or out, and wore no belts or watches.

Barr testified about the specifics of Toyota’s source code, based on his 800-page report. Phillip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor in computer engineering, a safety critical embedded systems specialist, authored a textbook, Better Embedded System Software, and performs private industry embedded software design reviews – including in the automotive industry – testified about Toyota’s engineering safety process. Both used a programmer’s derisive term for what they saw: spaghetti code – badly written and badly structured source code.

Barr testified:
... Quote:
There are a large number of functions that are overly complex. By the standard industry metrics some of them are untestable, meaning that it is so complicated a recipe that there is no way to develop a reliable test suite or test methodology to test all the possible things that can happen in it.

Some of them are even so complex that they are what is called unmaintainable, which means that if you go in to fix a bug or to make a change, you're likely to create a new bug in the process. Just because your car has the latest version of the firmware -- that is what we call embedded software --doesn't mean it is safer necessarily than the older one….

 And that conclusion is that the failsafes are inadequate. The failsafes that they have contain defects or gaps. But on the whole, the safety architecture is a house of cards. It is possible for a large percentage of the failsafes to be disabled at the same time that the throttle control is lost.


Even a Toyota programmer described the engine control application as “spaghetti-like” in an October 2007 document Barr read into his testimony.

Koopman was highly critical of Toyota’s computer engineering process. The accepted, albeit voluntary, industry coding standards were first set by Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) in 1995. Accompanying these rules is an industry metric, which equates broken rules with the introduction of a number of software bugs: For every 30 rule violations, you can expect on average three minor bugs and one major bug. Toyota made a critical mistake in declining to follow those standards, he said.

When NASA software engineers evaluated parts of Toyota’s source code during their NHTSA contracted review in 2010, they checked 35 of the MISRA-C rules against the parts of the Toyota source to which they had access and found 7,134 violations. Barr checked the source code against MISRA’s 2004 edition and found 81,514 violations.

Toyota substituted its own process, which had little overlap with the industry standard. Even so, Toyota’s programmers often broke their own rules. And they failed to keep adequate track of their departures from those rules – and the justification for doing so, which is also standard practice. Koopman testified that if safety is not baked into the recipe in the process of creating the product, it cannot be added later.
... Quote:
You have to exercise great care when you're doing safety critical software. You can't just wing it. And Toyota exercised some care, but they did not reach the level of accepted practice in how you need to design safety critical systems,” he said.

One of the biggest safety standards Toyota broke was allowing single point failures within its system. (Single point failure refers to a piece of hardware or software that has complete control over whether a system is safe or not—such as a single-engine airplane.) Koopman testified:
... Quote:
If there is a single point of failure, by every safety standard I have ever seen, it is by definition unsafe, and no amount of countermeasures, no amount of failsafes will fix that. They will reduce how often it happens, but it won't completely fix it. Because we have millions of vehicles out there, it will find a way to fail that you didn't think of, and it will fail.


Other egregious deviations from standard practice were the number of global variables in the system. (A variable is a location in memory that has a number in it. A global variable is any piece of software anywhere in the system can get to that number and read it or write it.)

The academic standard is zero. Toyota had more than 10,000 global variables.
... Quote:
And in practice, five, ten, okay, fine. 10,000, no, we're done. It is not safe, and I don't need to see all 10,000 global variables to know that that is a problem,” Koopman testified.


Other important design process errors Barr and Koopman identified were an absence of a peer code review, and Toyota’s failure to check the source code of its second CPU, supplied by Denso —even as executives assured Congress and NHTSA that the cause of UA couldn’t be in the engine software.

Barr testified to some of the vehicle behavior malfunctions caused by the death of tasks within the CPU, and concluded that Bookout’s UA was more likely than not caused by the death of a redacted-name task, called Task X at trial. Barr dubbed it “the kitchen-sink” task, because it controlled a lot of the vehicle’s functions, including throttle control; the cruise control – turning it on, maintain the speed and turning it off – and many of the failsafes on the main CPU.

He was critical of Toyota watchdog supervisor – software to detect the death of a task -- design. He testified that Toyota’s watchdog supervisor “is incapable of ever detecting the death of a major task. That's its whole job. It doesn't do it. It's not designed to do it.”

Instead, Toyota designed it to monitor CPU overload, and, Barr testified: “it doesn't even do that right. CPU overload is when there's too much work in a burst, a period of time to do all the tasks. If that happens for too long, the car can become dangerous because tasks not getting to use the CPU is like temporarily tasks dying.”

Barr also testified that Toyota’s software threw away error codes from the operating system, ignoring codes identifying a problem with a task. At trial, Barr said:

And task death, although I focused a lot of task X here, because it does so much and it does throttle control and it does failsafe, it's pretty important, but there is [redacted] tasks and they can die in different combinations. It could be task 3 and task X, or task 3and task 7 and task X, or just task 9. And those can cause an unpredictable range of vehicle misbehaviors. It turns out that unintended acceleration is just the most dangerous thing your car can do when it malfunctions.

Even if you were to dismiss their conclusions as nothing but paid-for expert testimony, Koopman and Barr’s assessment about software errors as a possible UA root cause go a long way in explaining so much: how Toyota’s system could fail and leave no trace; why we are still seeing UAs in late model Toyota vehicles and why Toyota can’t seem to fix it with floor mat and pedal recalls; how it could get away with hiding some of the root causes of UA events for so long.

Their descriptions of the incredible complexity of Toyota’s software also explain why NHTSA has reacted the way it has and why NASA never found a flaw it could connect to a Toyota’s engine going to a wide open throttle, ignoring the driver’s commands to stop and not set a diagnostic trouble code. For one, Barr testified, the NASA engineers were time limited, and did not have access to all of the source code. They relied on Toyota’s representations– and in some cases, Toyota misled NASA. For example, NASA was under the false belief that Toyota had designed in hardware bit flip protections called Error Detection and Correction Codes, (EDAC). The 2005 Camry for example did not have EDAC, Barr testified, but in an email Toyota told NASA that it did. At trial he said:

NASA didn't know that that wasn't there. It wasn't there in the 2005 Camry. And so if the bit-flip occurred, there would be no hardware mechanism to find it. And if it occurred in a critical value that was not mirrored, there would be no software protections against it. So the conclusion here is that there are critical variables in which bits could flip.

Their testimony explains why it would be near impossible for NHTSA to ever pin an electronic failure on a problem buried in software. NHTSA didn’t even have any software engineers on ODI’s staff during the myriad Toyota UA investigations. They have no real expertise on the complexities that actually underpin all of the safety-critical vehicle functions of today’s cars. It’s as if ODI engineers are investigating with an abacus, a chisel and a stone tablet. One begins to understand the agency’s stubborn doubling, tripling, quadrupaling down on floor mats and old ladies as explanations for UA events.

But even if NHTSA did have this expertise, the software piece is so complex ODI would never have the time or budget to assess an automaker’s source code. This is why we keep harping on the need for NHTSA to write a functional safety regulation – under its own steam or Congressional mandate.

We are posting preliminary drafts of Koopman’s (part 1 and part 2) and Barr's trial testimony, along with Barr's slides – long, but well worth a read for anyone interested in understanding more about embedded software systems in automobiles and how not to design one; where NHTSA went wrong: and the unbelievably shaky software at the foundation of Toyota’s electronic architecture.

Normally, one associates a company’s desire to shield trade secrets with the protection of something valuable. That something, one presumes, is the technology itself -- the secret recipe a company uses in making its product. Rather than protecting the automotive equivalent of formula for Coke, the testimony of Koopman and Barr suggest that Toyota really wanted to hide was its formula for disaster. Consider the contents of a September 2007 email among Toyota employees:

... Quote:
In truth technology such as failsafe is not part of the Toyota's engineering division's DNA,’ ” Barr read in court. “And it continues, ‘But isn't it good that it is recognized as one of the major strengths of Toyota and its system controls industry.’ And then I highlighted also the portion that says, ‘Continuing on as is would not be a good thing.’”


Read more about it here http://www.safetyresearch.n...
By netchicken: posted on 3-6-2015



http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=8805




Posted by
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)