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Toyota Unintended Acceleration Case Study

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A Case Study on Toyota Unintended Acceleration Toyota’s Unintended Acceleration disaster could have been avoided if the software engineers had practiced proper software development steps. Numerous lessons, both technical and managerial can be learned from this software catastrophe. Three crucial lessons include: ensuring the proper implementation of fail-safes, adherence to rigorous coding standards (MISRA-C), and minimizing software complexity. The first incident of “unwanted acceleration” occurred in 2003. However, this was not reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) until five years later. And it was not until 2004 that the NHTSA actively began investigating certain Toyota models. These investigations were eventually deemed inconclusive due to the “lack of resources” (rather than actual evidence) to investigate further (Bagnara, 2014). Over the next three years a series of investigations open up, but once again have been deemed inconclusive due to lack of “administrative resources” (Bagnara, 2014). In 2007, the acceleration issues are associated with faulty floor mats getting caught beneath the pedals causing the vehicle to accelerate uncontrollable. Toyota begins issuing recalls soon after. Two years later, a fatal accident occurs involving the death of four people which was again linked to defective floor mats. However, it was quickly becoming evident that not all the fault can be blamed on floor mats. In 2010, Toyota reveals that the

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