Toyota admits to software bug in black boxes
Throughout the past year, Toyota Motor Corp. has been involved in a number of high profile recalls spurred by concerns of sudden, uncontrollable acceleration and serious car accidents. From recall to recall, the automaker has tried to blame the problem on a number of different issues based on data from on-board black box data recorders, similar to the type used to determine the cause of airplane crashes.
It turns out that those data recorders might not be so reliable either.
Toyota is now acknowledging the existence of a software bug which causes the black boxes to report faulty data. The company said it has identified the problem and fixed it, but the admission of a problem in the data recorders will likely cast another cloud over a company that has been much maligned since the first reports of sudden acceleration cases last year.
The cause of the acceleration problems, according to Toyota, has changed seemingly from month to month. First they believed it to be improper installation of floor mats, then they blamed a problem with the accelerator mechanism. Human error was also cited in several of the cases. Many of these diagnoses were based largely on data collected from the black boxes, which now appear to have faults of their own.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has even cited Toyota black box data in their accident reports to Congress.
Since last year, Toyota has issued recalls for over 11 million vehicles and been named in hundreds of lawsuits for potentially dangerous vehicle defects.
Toyota has written an update for their black box software and provided it to the various safety agencies investigating the accident claims.
