[Fresh Wind]

Tin whiskers are NOT unusual, and have been a problem even where no solder is involved.

http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/
http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/photos/index.html

Assertions that NASA determined that there was no electronic cause for the problem were from a preliminary report (Feb. 2011), a later report (Sept. 2011) changes all that:

http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-NASA-GSFC-whisker-failure-app-sensor.pdf

As I have been saying all along, regardless of what caused of the “unintended acceleration”, the underlying problem with Toyotas was the fact that there was no brake override of the throttle, a problem that was quietly fixed during the course of the recalls.

This problem (and the solution) was demonstrated in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZZNR9O3xZM

All this stuff about the government “going after” Toyota is just hot air.

Toyota DID have a problem, and now they have fixed it.

[smokingfrog]

Interesting. I didn’t know you could lose your power assist if you let your foot off the brake in a situation like that.