Accelerating the study of potential automotive electronics failures

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is ill-equipped to detect problems with automotive electronics, according to a report released by the National Research Council last week. The 157-page report is titled “TRB Special Report 308: The Safety Challenge and Promise of Automotive Electronics: Insights from Unintended Acceleration.”

To conduct the study that led to the conclusions expressed in the report, the NRC says it “…appointed a 16-member committee of experts tasked with considering NHTSA's recent experience in responding to concerns over the potential for faulty electronics to cause the unintentional vehicle acceleration as reported by some drivers.”

The NRC says that findings from the committee “…indicate how the electronics systems being added to automobiles present many opportunities for making driving safer but at the same time present new demands for ensuring the safe performance of increasingly capable and complex vehicle technologies. These safety assurance demands pertain both to the automotive industry's development and deployment of electronics systems and to NHTSA's fulfillment of its safety oversight role.”

The committee recommends that the NHTSA develop a long-term strategy for dealing with the challenges that arise from the proliferation of automotive electronics.

The committee recounts NHTSA's experience in studying unexpected acceleration in Toyota vehicles, with NHTSA concluding that “…these occurrences were the result of the driver accidentally pressing the accelerator pedal instead of the brake; floor mats and other obstructions that entrap the accelerator pedal; and damaged or malfunctioning mechanical components such as broken throttles, frayed and trapped connector cables, and sticking accelerator pedal assemblies.” The report does acknowledge that in some instances, such as those involving severe brake damage, other factors may have been involved.

Among the committee's conclusions: “Knowing what to look for and when to pursue electronics as a candidate cause of unsafe vehicle behaviors will be increasingly important to NHTSA. It is with this future in mind that the committee provides its recommendations to the agency.”

A press release announcing the availability of the report states, “Although NHTSA concluded that errant electronic throttle control systems (ETCs) were not a plausible cause [of the Toyota acceleration problem], persistent questions led the agency to ask for further investigation by NASA, which supported NHTSA's original conclusion. The agency also commissioned the Research Council study for advice in handling future issues involving the safe performance of automotive electronics. The Research Council report finds NHTSA's decision to close its investigation of Toyota's ETC justified on the basis of the agency's investigations. However, it is 'troubling' that NHTSA could not convincingly address public concerns about the safety of automotive electronics.”

I've written of being skeptical of electronics being at the root of unattended acceleration problems. I've tended to agree with the writer and commenter Robert Wright, who wrote back in March 2010 that “…driving one of these suspect Toyotas raises your chances of dying in a car crash over the next two years from .01907 percent (that's 19 one-thousandths of 1 percent, when rounded off) to .01935 percent (also 19 one-thousandths of one percent). I can live with those odds. Sure, I'd rather they were better, but it's not worth losing sleep over.” He further noted that money spent investigating the problem might had saved more lives if invested elsewhere.

Wright noted, however, that a fear factor that can disproportionately raise consumer mistrust, foreshadowing the committee's report last week expressing as troublesome the fact that the NHTSA findings did not convincingly affect public concerns. Wrote Wright, “…not all deaths are created equal. A fatal brake failure is scary, but not as scary as your car seizing control of itself and taking you on a harrowing death ride. It's almost as if the car is a living, malicious being.”

It would be well for government, automotive manufacturers, and makers of automotive electronics to do what's necessary to dispel such fears, and the NRC's recommendation that NHTSA develop a long-term automotive-electronics strategy seems a step in the right direction.