1) A lot of these articles imply that some expert has demonstrated how a coding error will cause unintended acceleration. Then when you look at the actual source, it becomes clear that the "demonstration" involves changing the internal state of the controller in all sorts of arbitrary ways, and sometimes rewiring its sensors in an invalid way as well. In other words, this is not a recipe along the lines of "blip the throttle while changing from N to D, press the brake within 0.2 seconds, the throttle will now be wide open". The fact that no such recipe has been found, despite many millions of dollars spent on expert analysis, suggests that it doesn't exist in the wild. Implying that this code is killing people somewhere out there is misleading.

2) Yes, it has been overblown. We know that throttles can stick open, usually due to jammed or sticking linkages and pedals. That's not a huge problem, since brakes are powerful enough to stop cars in this state. I don't think it makes a huge amount of sense to rewrite software to stop software-induced unintended acceleration, which probably doesn't even happen, instead of writing software for lane departure/collision warning/assisted emergency braking and other safety systems, which we know can help drivers avoid accidents.

I guess a third issue here is the American litigation system, which can turn companies into villains without the slightest indication that their products cause any more issues than anybody else's - all it takes is a non-zero probability of failure (true for most products) and a media + legal frenzy.