Submitted by laflizzy t3_120ldxm in CambridgeMA
themaverick7 t1_jdipmsp wrote
Everyone's saying it's panic hit-the-gas, which likely, but there are documented cases of cars uncontrollably accelerating without the accelerator pedal being depressed at all.
It happens when the voltage to the ECU fluctuates so much that it bugs out and gets stuck sending a 100% accel signal to the engine. Cars these days are governed by hundreds of chips and have numerous electronic components, so makes sense that they glitch from time to time.
WaitForItTheMongols t1_jdiylhj wrote
> Cars these days are governed by hundreds of computers
That's an exaggeration. There is no car out there that has "hundreds of computers" in it, unless you take an extremely loose definition of "computer" that is something like "a chip with transistors in it". I think any reasonable definition of a computer involves being reprogrammable (even if only with in-depth servicing), and I don't think you'll find hundreds of devices in a car that meet that definition.
themaverick7 t1_jdke3zn wrote
Apologies, I meant hundreds of chips. Edited
tagsb t1_jdj7g2g wrote
Vehicle programming standards are extremely strict (with the exception of autonomous driving which regulators have yet to catch up with). The sources used on that Wikipedia section cite a whopping single case of this happening outside a lab where they forced it
themaverick7 t1_jdkf1wu wrote
Completely agree that standards are very strict. That's why they're rare. But code are written by humans, and mistakes happen.
Remember the hundreds of Toyota acceleration cases? They attributed it all to faulty pedals or floor mats. But multiple lines of evidence has come out that the ECU code had a critical flaw and at least some were attributed to that malfunctioning.
https://www.safetyresearch.net/toyota-unintended-acceleration-and-the-big-bowl-of-spaghetti-code/
ECU-related SUAs are more common than you think.
tagsb t1_jdl9jt3 wrote
The article you just provided shows a regulatory board finding issues with vehicle code nearly 20 years ago, with again no proof of ECU related SUAs other than "maybe it could happen". Not an overly compelling proof point
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