Toyota's woes could be software related

Filed under: News

I never thought I'd be writing about Toyota, a major car manufacturer, here on Download Squad. While we've mentioned cars before, usually it's in the context of an on-board entertainment system or a goofy experiment.

But it turns out that the accelerator problem that has prompted a massive recall of Toyota vehicles could be related to the onboard software the car manufacturer employs in these cars. Computers have become more and more integral in modern vehicles, and Computerworld reports that some vehicles like the affected Toyota models are fly by wire. Fly-by-wire, if you're not familiar with the term, refers to the idea that the controls that the user manipulates like the gas and brake pedal are not physically connected to the throttle and brakes on the car, but rather are simply inputs into the car's computer, which then controls the throttle and brakes digitally. Full story...