WP - Why it's so hard for Toyota to find out what's wrong

[d.gibbs]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/06/AR2010030602448.html

Why it's so hard for Toyota to find out what's wrong
By Frank Ahrens
Sunday, March 7, 2010; G01

I won't lie to you: I was not a good engineering student. But I managed to acquire a bachelor of sciences in mechanical engineering, and the recent Toyota hearings on Capitol Hill brought back a lot of memories. Specifically, memories about how engineers figure out why mechanical things fail. It was made painfully clear at the hearings that a number of lawmakers do not understand the process. An exchange between Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Toyota President Akio Toyoda illustrated the problem. Toyoda said that when his company gets a complaint about a mechanical problem, engineers set to work trying to duplicate the problem in their labs to find out what went wrong. Norton said: "Your answer - we'll wait to see if this is duplicated - is very troublesome." Norton asked Toyoda why his company waited until a problem recurred to try to diagnose it, which is exactly what he was not saying.....

"It's just so difficult for people to understand the complexity of the thing," said David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan and an engineer. "They don't have the background. They don't have the time to do an investigation. They want to oversimplify a thing that can't be oversimplified." Toyota is facing an incredibly difficult task. Here's what it knows: It has received hundreds of complaints about unintended acceleration in its vehicles in recent years. People have died in these crashes. Over the same period, hundreds more have died in Toyota crashes that had nothing to do with runaway acceleration. After that, it knows nothing. Toyota must search its data and look for patterns or similarities among the incidents. Among dozens of variables, it must consider.... (list)

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expanding its search for the problem. It bought a 2006 Lexus that experienced runaway acceleration and will test it for everything it can think of. I called Giorgio Rizzoni of Ohio State University, an expert in failure analysis and director of the school's Center for Automotive Research. He said the vehicle will be outfitted with instruments and taken to a proving ground, where it will be driven for hours to see whether the runaway acceleration can be duplicated... Attention has been focused on mechanical and electronic issues with Toyotas, but Rizzoni raised another possible cause of the runaway acceleration: a software glitch. He explained that each vehicle contains "layers of computer code that may be added from one model year to next" that control nearly every system, from acceleration to braking to stability. Rizzoni said this software is rigorously tested, but he added: "It is well-known in our community that there is no scientific, firm way of actually completely verifying and validating software."...

That's the problem Toyota faces. And, after thorough testing by Toyota, NHTSA and garage mechanics trying to win the $1 million Edmunds.com prize, no single answer may be found. Obviously, this will not stop juries from awarding damages in the liability lawsuits already filed. Finally, Toyota can't say this, but I can: Some of the cases of runaway acceleration could have been caused by driver error. Think about the times you've been in an accident, a near-miss or - more to the point - a distracted-driving situation that almost veered out of control. You remember the white-hot spike of fear that shot up your spine. You remember the shakes afterward. But do you remember what you did during those few seconds of panic? Do you remember where your feet and hands and eyes went? Richard Schmidt, a former UCLA psychology professor and now an auto industry consultant specializing in human motor skills, said the problem almost always lies with drivers who step on the wrong pedal. If you were lucky, your reflexes, muscle memory and driving experience - and sheer chance - saved you, and you emerged unscathed from your near-miss. But you could just have easily smashed your foot down on the wrong pedal or jerked the wheel the wrong way. Or hit the radio volume and scared yourself into a dangerous maneuver. Or made a dozen other mistakes. And none of those would have been the fault of the automaker.

[liberal N proud]

1. They have to admit the problem exists first

Just today I saw a something on the news about them denying the electronic problem that some are saying is causing the problem.

[Fumesucker]

4. Ask any mechanic, people are absolutely horrible at describing problems

Trying to find out what sequence of events lead to a breakdown is often amazingly frustrating, most people are horrible observers of anything technical and cars are the most complex items the average person comes into contact with on a day to day basis.

[liberal N proud]

6. No question about that

But this problem has grown much larger than that with industry experts and others who can describe the problem.

If you take all the collective descriptions of a problem and combine they you should be able to determine what is actually happening on a vehicle.

[Fumesucker]

10. There may well be more than one fault..

Just like with commercial plane crashes, it's quite rare for it to be a single thing that leads to the crash, it is usually a sequence of events and/or human errors that turn out to be the ultimate cause.

[ShadowLiberal]

11. Indeed, I work on software development, customer bug reports are usually the hardest to reproduce

At my company if our program crashes customers can send a bug report to us, the window to send an email automatically pops up, with a textbox for the user to fill in a description of the problem and how it happened.

Over half of our bug reports from customers come back with the textbox blank, which makes it very difficult to find the problem when all I know is "stack overflow", or "object not set to an instance of an object" occurred in a program with over 30+ forms, some of them quite large with a lot of features.

Employee bug reports, and bug reports from the software development department are always by far the best and most descriptive at how to cause the bug.

[stray cat]

2. Relatively rare intermittant problems are always really hard to figure out

you can't tell until much later whether you got something fixed.

[Fumesucker]

3. Good article..

Anyone who has had to troubleshoot a complex electromechanical device knows how frustratingly difficult it can be..

I had one piece of equipment inside a building once that we finally figured out was working improperly when the wind was blowing in a certain direction which upset the airflow out of a cooling vent on the roof.

Add in the complexity of software layers on top of all that and it can be mind bogglingly complex.

[Fire1]

5. That may be true but in this case, Norton is just plain stupid. n/t

[Fumesucker]

7. Norton isn't stupid, just like the vast majority of people..

She doesn't understand even the language, let alone the difficulties of technical troubleshooting..

Trying to troubleshoot a car that won't start it's hard to get people to tell you whether the starter is turning the engine over or not, which is just about the most basic troubleshooting step in that scenario.. I know, I've done technical support over the phone quite a bit and it's amazingly frustrating dealing with well spoken and intelligent people who simply cannot tell you ridiculously simple things.

[Fire1]

12. Look, I'm probably THE most non technical and/or

mechanical person on the planet and I even understood what Mr. Toyoda told her. What she spit back at him wasn't what he said AT ALL and so noted in the article. Sorry, she's stupid.

[MindPilot]

8. Incredibly difficult problems to solve.

When I was a tech for Ford, there was a new F150 that sometimes would not start (crank) but only after the owner backed into his driveway and only the first attempt in the morning. After giving the owner a loaner vehicle so I could try to duplicate the problem every morning for literally weeks, the failure finally manifested itself long enough for me to find it.

It was a few strands of wire broken--hidden by perfectly intact insulation--in the wiring that went to neutral safety switch on the steering column. I suspect since the last act by the driver was moving the shifter from reverse to park instead of from drive to park was why it only happened after backing into the driveway.

Toyota has one hell of a trouble-shooting challenge on their hands.

[dkf]

9. The question is why isn't Nissan or BMW having the same problem

The answer is they have a system that automatically stops acceleration when the brakes are activated.

[Kalyke]

15. It's been my family's experience that all BMW DOES is stop.

My husband's 2001 is in the shop every three months for stupid shit.

Translation: I will NEVER own a foreign car.

[dkf]

16. Lol

My Infiniti is amazing. And I used to think Nissan was second class to Honda but now I am extremely happy. Got it second hand too with great mileage. What a deal.

[Fire1]

18. Nissan is the shit!! I owned one of their first models.

Datsun 280Z! NEVER had a problem at over 100,000 miles!!

[dkf]

22. That was a cool car.

You probably wouldnt have been as happy with the sentra my dad bought in the early 80s though. It was pathetic with no power whatsoever. Soured me off the name til I drove my present car which rocks.

[SoCalDem]

19. We love our Kia Amanti.. NO problems and very luxurious

and our '91 Honda Accord EX is still going strong, at 270K+ miles ..It's still got the "moves" it had when it was new, even if it's no longer "pretty"..

[Kalyke]

13. Leave it to the Post to give wiggle room to a multi-national corp

who is ruining the United States' economy.

Yes... I know ToyShitta employes American workers, but to the ultimate detriment of those workers. They get paid by ToyShtta and then use their money to buy goods that employee... someone making crap wages in a third-world country, while contributing NOTHING to other US workers or our GNP.

:crazy:

Boggles the mind that people don't get this.

[spoony]

25. That's what I got out of it.

I know, big surprise the Post is taking this stance right?

[Lint Head]

14. Someone who is experiencing a long acceleration incident may

panic at first but realize their car is moving down the highway without them touching any pedal. That happened to me several years ago.
I was on a long stretch of interstate highway and I felt the accelerator move under my foot all the way to the floor. The auto I was in did not have cruise control. When the initial shock wore off I put the gear in neutral. The revs sounded like the engine would throw a cylinder or explode. I remained calm and coasted to a nearby service station. My accelerator was simply stuck. I had it repaired and never had the problem again. Some times products are poorly engineered. In this day of mass production the original intent the engineer
had is lost because less meticulous attention is being given to critical areas of a product. I work in the mainframe computer programming area of my company. When it comes to code even less attention is being paid because of the laissez-faire attitude of the computer engineers. When there are problems it's always something small the programmer missed that he or she would not have missed if they had just paid attention or actually fully read the work request to create or alter the code. Small things missed can cause catastrophic problems when it comes to changing the computer code that runs a major multi billion dollar corporation.

[safeinOhio]

20. These cars have a black box

that gives information about the 5 seconds before and after an accident. Toyota has been slow in turning over the boxes to the Feds. Driver error would be forth coming.

[swilton]

17. A metaphor for our economic crises

The complexity makes it almost impossible for the laymen (anyone but economic/banking gurus) to figure out...

Our fearless leaders who put themselves on pedestals as experts know nothing about which they are legislating - They have become great at marketiing themselves and campaign organizing - but as for the rest of the problems that require some higher intellect in today's world, they know diddley squat.

This applies as equally to health care as it does to foreign policy...

[Gin]

21. (IMO) the designers should take possession of the cars that are

accelerating- and not wrecked- and drive/use them to actually experience the event....the sequence of events is important.

[Odin2005]

23. They know what's wrong but it's so bad that they are covering it up.

I'm thinking it has to do with computer glitches.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

24. They know what's wrong, they just don't want to pay for it.

nt