The Micheal Barr Group did a very high-profile autopsy on the code. The upshot is not good for Toyota.
Some of the key overall findings: The management was at fault, by picking people who were not experienced in developing real-time devices to lead software development (many software faults were those of inexperienced developers, and of developers inexperienced in real-time control). The lead developers were at fault, following extremely poor coding styles. The end code, of course, was badly done, as you might expect from management who didn't understand and leads inexperienced in the field.
Toyota, bluntly, messed up in breadth and depth when it came to software quality control. If you can find an unsafe coding practice listed on the web, Barr found it and detailed the precise ways it was unsafe. Huge interrupt service routines, complex logic in the wrong places, huge cyclomatic complexity.
It is understood in the world of safety and real-time software that certain designs of code are to be encouraged and others discouraged, based upon painful experience. It is not a handwavy "different strokes for different folks" field. The information from the Barr transcript can be used as a comprehensive manual of things to not do.
There were multiple scenarios described in which such a failure was plausible. The story is nowhere as cut and dried as in the Therac or the Arianne cases.
Here are his Embedded Systems Conference slides: http://www.barrgroup.com/killer-apps/
http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/Bookout_v_Toyota_Barr_... http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/BarrSlides_FINAL_SCRUB...
Floor mats was a sort of strawman erected ( by someone other than Gladwell ) in the history of the subject.
He's illuminating the schism between how engineers think and how ... people ... who are not engineers .... think. Always a fun topic, IMO.
Both Toyota and GM acted maliciously in covering up flaws in the products they sold. For Gladwell to spin the folksy, aww shucks it is just the floor mats, you still have breaks is just as disingenuous as GM telling teenagers not to hang so much shit from their key chain.
http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende...
> Jean Bookout and her friend and passenger Barbara Schwarz were exiting Interstate Highway 69 in Oklahoma, when she lost throttle control of her 2005 Camry. When the service brakes would not stop her speeding sedan, she threw the parking brake, leaving a 150-foot skid mark from right rear tire, and a 25-foot skid mark from the left. The Camry, however, continued speeding down the ramp and across the road at the bottom, crashing into an embankment. Schwarz died of her injuries; Bookout spent five months recovering from head and back injuries.
I don't think it's an opinion piece. It's just not journalism. People find Gladwell infuriating because he somewhat defies categorization and tries to take a very neutral, nonjudgemental tone. I said "essay" because that's as close as I could get.
I don't buy "acted maliciously". I don't agree that it was covered up. Malice implies intent; there was no intent. Indeed, that's the problem. There really isn't, to my knowledge, a fixed protocol for these things outside of whatever management or PR protocol you follow and then possibly the courts.
Toyota as an entity believed that it was acting responsibly.
From the article: "The engineers were right. A series of exhaustive investigations by federal regulators, with help from NASA engineers, established that the perception of an electronic failure was almost certainly illusory. The problem was caused either by the fact that some people put in poorly fitted, nonstandard floor mats or by the fact that drivers were pressing the accelerator thinking that it was the brake."
For one, Gladwell isn't the one saying it was the floor mats. The team of Federal regulators, with help from NASA engineers said that. Toyota took this seriously and launched an investigation.
Prior to Micheal Barr's analysis, I'd say it was formally undecided whether there was a software problem. Even then, the defects found were not a smoking gun.
This is new territory. The Barr Group is one of the first of its kind.
I really can't say I like the trend of exploiting ambiguity to obscure the line between fact and fiction.