Page 102 - Toyota Under Fire

THE RECALL CRISIS

But was there ever any justification for this belief to begin with?
Should regulators, drivers, and the media have suspected vehicle
computers and electronics?
Looking at the plot devices of thriller movies reveals that hu-
man beings have a deep-seated suspicion of machines, particu-
larly computers. Movies like War Games, 2001, The Terminator
franchise, and Christine, to name just a few, embody our concern
that machines that we don’t truly understand can run amok and
put us in danger. Our cars, as they have steadily replaced mechan-
ics with computers, seem to fall increasingly into this category.
Fifteen or so years ago, a chain e-mail parodied personal comput-
ers, particularly the Windows operating system, by comically de-
picting what our driving experience would be like if cars behaved
more like our computers and just froze without warning. Today,
while still amusing, the litany is ironic at best, given that the aver-
age passenger vehicle has 10 or more computers built into it that
are more powerful than the PCs on which Bill Gates founded the
Microsoft empire.

The “Ghosts” in Our Machines
What do all those computers do? Virtually every modern passen-
ger car’s engine is controlled by a computer, known in the indus-
try as an engine control module, or ECM. The ECM monitors
the engine’s performance and can dynamically adjust the mix of
fuel and air, detect a loss of vacuum or a buildup of heat, and take
any number of other actions that maximize either the fuel effi-
ciency or the output of the engine. Similar control modules gov-
ern many other functions in modern cars.
Since their introduction by BMW in the late 1980s, electronic
throttle controls (ETCs) have been among these computerized

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