Sadly, I don't think we'll know much. Manufacturers when sued typically settle out for large amounts of money (to avoid admitting guilt) with a party agreement not to share pertinent details. Government agencies do not have software or computer engineers on staff who specialize in automotive forensics.
I'll agree with you that the above is highly unlikely if not impossible in older cars, but with newer cars (drive by wire) I can certainly imagine it.
FWIW, the above incident is not isolated. There are at least roughly a dozen such cases every year across the country every year. And those are the ones where the driver lives to tell about it.
My honest opinion is that while there are logic fail safes in onboard car computers, there are certain not known at the time of engineering discrete failure mods and programming bugs that make run away acceleration possible. Its like playing a high paying slot machine, not likely you'll ever win on a casual night, but give the lever 1 quadrillion tries and the odds of winning become a given.
The manufacturers don't want to admit such problems exist, bargaining on shortcomings being placed on the user.
I'll agree with you that the above is highly unlikely if not impossible in older cars, but with newer cars (drive by wire) I can certainly imagine it.
FWIW, the above incident is not isolated. There are at least roughly a dozen such cases every year across the country every year. And those are the ones where the driver lives to tell about it.
My honest opinion is that while there are logic fail safes in onboard car computers, there are certain not known at the time of engineering discrete failure mods and programming bugs that make run away acceleration possible. Its like playing a high paying slot machine, not likely you'll ever win on a casual night, but give the lever 1 quadrillion tries and the odds of winning become a given.
The manufacturers don't want to admit such problems exist, bargaining on shortcomings being placed on the user.