I spent a good part of my career as an engineer involved in complex aerospace systems. When I think of all the complexity that goes into aircraft design, I am impressed that our engineering process deliver such a high quality and safe solution. I have always thought a great deal of Toyota and their talent. The loss of life from unintended acceleration is a great tragedy. Frankly its amazing there are not more automotive deaths given the range of drivers and capabilities.
It could be that Toyota has a fundamental problem with their design. It could be they should have designed more fail-safes, and they will. Maybe Toyota is culpable, god only knows. I do know in aerospace we had driven reliability so deep in our systems we were at a point that a sequence of random failures, converging at a moment in time, was our safety challenge. In a Six Sigma/Lean world, human error, manufacturing defect, etc are rare sources of failure.
In administration's effort to get to the bottom of the Toyota unintended Acceleration problem,NASA has been ordered to study the effect of solar flares on the Toyota acceleration system. Solar flares? Really? Are they going to study the impact of solar flares on everything else? Did we all of a sudden find a new unknown source of failure? Not likely.
I guess its OK for the government to be through, but there is also a time as an engineer to be practical. An old principle Occam's Razor says, "given all the possible explanations, the simplest is often correct." Yes, Toyota could be evil. Maybe they hid data. Maybe little green men came down and just targeted Toyota systems instead of the hundreds of other automotive systems, power plant controls, and even triggers on nuclear bombs. Maybe solar flares are the source of all unexplained failures. This sort of reminds me of the goofy liberal arts major trying to say something technical to a gathering of geeks. The geeks then look at the liberal arts guy and gasp for air because they think the comment is so nutty. Sort of Gilligan meets the Professor.
I laughed for several minutes after hearing the NASA story on the news. Then I heard a bunch of reports start describing how government officials think maybe someone could put a wire mesh around the system to eliminate the impact of these solar flares. Really? Yes, that's the ticket. It took the media and some government official to teach engineers about the principles of shielding (Faraday Cage). What a waste of brainpower and resources. Society needs to appreciate that we can't fix all problems and we should not waste people's time with nutty theories.
I feel very sorry for those that lost their life and the tragedy for their family's. Its a terrible situation.
Thank you very much for your very thoughtful and considered comment. I approach the journey in very much the same way as you've described yours.
Posted by: coach bags 2011 | September 07, 2011 at 02:51 AM