The Soft Side of Functional Safety

Late last year, Toyota hastily settled an ‘Unintended Acceleration’ lawsuit just hours after an Oklahoma jury determined that the automator acted with ‘reckless disregard’. Toyotal delivered a $3 million settlement to the plantiffs before the jury could determine puntive damages. And, GM with their faulty ignition switch is commanding equal concern.

While the evidence in the Toyota case does mention coding standards such as MISRA C, the problems went far deeper than just the way the code itself was writter. As the Safety Research Net website suggests, “Phillip Koopman and Michael Barr [the plantiff’s software experts] provided fascinating insights into the myriad prombles with Toyota’s software development process and its source code…. The list of deficiencies in process and product was lengthy.”

Read the full article from Electronic Specifier here >>