"Driver error or pedal misapplication was found responsible for most of the incidents.[28] The report ended stating, "Our conclusion is Toyota's problems were mechanical, not electrical." This included sticking accelerator pedals, and pedals caught under floor mats."

And Malcolm Gladwell's podcast about the subject, http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/08-blame-game

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-toyota-prius-i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barr_(software_enginee...

T-SB-0172-09

I love the concept of electrical cars but that has to come with a leap forward in software quality and electrical engineering quality, which I am not really seeing happen.

The idea of Quality is still, basically, alien in the software field. Some of that can be blamed on 'the marketplace' but then again, I believe that if people are going to call themselves "Engineers" they should take up that old mantle of the public responsibility inherent in that title, as it was developed after much blood and horror was spilled over the failed bridges and railroads of the 19th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCTf7wT5WR0

This is especially true for high technology projects, and only becoming more of a risk as technology becomes more complex.

Can totally see it happening with something like self-driving cars, which is currently still a black art (remember how even Uber apparently needed to filch some IP from Waymo to even get its own project going?)

Any proof? I see a settlement but not an admission or proof of guilt by Uber (not saying the former Google employee wasn't dirty). https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/9/16995254/waymo-uber-lawsui...

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/08-blame-game

http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/tipping-point

Edit: I see this is addressed in updates to the Revisionist History posting, in PDF form.

It appears that autonomous vehicle progress has an interesting moat where being good at it (the ability to drive a lot of miles) allows you to get better faster (drive more miles, more quickly). It is similar to a network effect, but with competency rather than number of connections.

Does anyone have a name for this type of advantage, or know of examples in other areas?

This doesn't seem to be the case. Look at the California disengagement statistics over cumulative miles - it looks like it's logarithmic or something, certainly not accelerating. Or look at Waymo in Arizona: they are driving, what, 70,000 miles per month and have racked up cumulative millions there already; if there really were some sort of compound interest or exponential improvement, then after they solved it well enough to go live and started racking up all those miles, self-driving cars should be on the verge of being solved & going global unless you postulate an enormous distance in between 'good enough to drive customers around Arizona' and 'good enough to drive customers around everywhere'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect