There’s a story circulating that Toyota’s unexpected acceleration problems may be caused by cosmic rays. Seems like BS to me: Cosmic rays cause random problems with computers. It would be extremely odd if any significant number of these caused a car to accelerate uncontrollably. For this to happen, the hardware must be particularly vulnerable to one specific type of damage and the software must have been written by monkeys. Any safety-critical system SHOULD be designed to be fail-safe. I.e. If the cosmic ray strike causes an error, the computer should correct itself. If the self-correction fails, then the system should default to a safe solution (e.g. the car stops or continues at the current speed)
Toyota woes.
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