I was in the "wait for the testing" camp to decide if tin whiskers were 
the culprit, so I was curious to hear that Nasa declared it wasn't an 
electronic malfunction, though their report found quite a bit of 
whiskering.  

But (p118) they do note that in all sequences, releasing the pedal 
closed the throttle, and the brakes remained operational.

Was this purely a stroke of programming luck, that shorting terminals 
caused problems, but it just happened to be recoverable?

Were there other components that weren't so lucky, and NASA just 
didn't find those whiskers?  They did find whiskers in both failed and 
non-failed pedal pots.

Other notes:
The NHTSA received 3000 complaints of unintended sudden 
accelleration.  Thery were only able to confirm 5 of those.  And why did 
they peak so quickly then suddenly disappear?  Remember Audi?   A 
couple cases.  A 60 Minutes prime time expose.  Thousands of cases.  
After Audi was nearly bankrupted then completely vindicated, the 
problem vanished.  It's a regular news item - a car (any car) crashes 
into building, bewildered driver doesn't know what happened.  If it 
happened last year in a Toyota, he knew why.  Or his lawyer did.

A conundrum for the EU:
While trying to figure out what might have killed 93 people, Tin 
whiskers being a prime suspect, they also came across some Tin-Lead 
capacitors in the CTS Hall effect sensor boards.   Does the EU 
prosecute?

Pete

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