from eetimes-
Interesting:
MADISON, Wis. — Could bad code kill a person? It could, and it apparently did.
The Bookout v Toyota Motor Corp. case, which blamed sudden acceleration in a Toyota Camry for a wrongful death, touches the issue directly.
This case -- one of several hundred contending that Toyota's vehicles inadvertently accelerated -- was the first in which a jury heard the plaintiffs' attorneys supporting their argument with extensive testimony from embedded systems experts. That testimony focused on Toyota's electronic throttle control system -- specifically, its source code.
The plaintiffs' attorneys closed their argument by saying that the electronics throttle control system caused the sudden acceleration of a 2005 Camry in a September 2007 accident that killed one woman and seriously injured another on an Oklahoma highway off-ramp. It wasn't loose floor mats, a sticky pedal, or driver error.
An Oklahoma judge announced that a settlement to avoid punitive damages had been reached Thursday evening. This was announced shortly after an Oklahoma County jury found Toyota liable for the crash and awarded $1.5 million of compensation to Jean Bookout, the driver, who was injured in the crash, and $1.5 million to the family of Barbara Schwarz, who died.
During the trial, embedded systems experts who reviewed Toyota's electronic throttle source code testified that they found Toyota's source code defective, and that it contains bugs -- including bugs that can cause unintended acceleration.
"We've demonstrated how as little as a single bit flip can cause the driver to lose control of the engine speed in real cars due to software malfunction that is not reliably detected by any fail-safe," Michael Barr, CTO and co-founder of Barr Group, told us in an exclusive interview. Barr served as an expert witness in this case.
A core group of seven experts, including four from Barr Group, analyzed the Toyota case. Their analysis ultimately resulted in Barr's 800-plus-page report....
We did a few things that NASA apparently did not have time to do," Barr said. For one thing, by looking within the real-time operating system, the experts identified "unprotected critical variables." They obtained and reviewed the source code for the "sub-CPU," and they "uncovered gaps and defects in the throttle fail safes."
Further, the team ran simulations in the Green Hills Simulator. "This confirmed tasks can die without the watchdog resetting the processor." His group also independently checked worst-case stack depth. "We found many big mistakes in the Toyota analysis that NASA relied on."
The experts demonstrated that "the defects we found were linked to unintended acceleration through vehicle testing," Barr said. "We also obtained and reviewed the source code for the black box and found that it can record false information about the driver's actions in the final seconds before a crash."
It's important to note Barr Group testimony led to a billion-dollar economic-loss settlement by Toyota last December. Because of that settlement, details of the technical discoveries made back then by the experts were not made public until the Oklahoma trial. The economic-loss settlement resolved hundreds of lawsuits claiming vehicles depreciated after the company issued recalls related to faulty acceleration. Toyota still faces lawsuits claiming injury or death related to the recalls.
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