[ZDan]

Originally Posted by Kunzite

Let's quote directly from the article:
It's certainly a defect, but it's not SUA

The accelerator pedal JUMPING to 15 degrees is sudden unintended acceleration in the sense that we generally expect acceleration to increase linearly with pedal position and not to instantaneously increase.

and the acceleration doesn't get stuck to full throttle. Not in the described case, at least.

Exactly, not in *this* case. But looking at that part, it's just as likely for other shorts between different terminals to occur, which would have different effects. It's certainly possible that uncommanded full-throttle could have happened in other tin-whiskering related failures. I'm not saying that that has happened, only that it's easily a possibility.

I guess that scandal helped a lot Governmental Motors. Bailing them out, then hitting hard a competitor - nice tactic, it worked perfectly. In the US, because us, Europeans, didn't buy it (or at least this is my impression, comparing US and EU forums).

Fact: Toyota's HAVE experienced failures of accelerator position sensors, with or without the existence of any hypothetical "Governmental Motors" conspiracy theory. Unless you're saying that paper (which as far as I can tell hasn't been publicized, the only reason I found it is that tin whiskering is related to what I'm working on at my job) is part of it.

Btw, my car was through a recall for a real accelerator-related problem: http://www.toyota.com/recall/pedal.html

Do you not consider the failure described as a REAL accelerator related problem?

This would happen in the Nordic (i.e. cold weather) countries; my car was perfectly fine - one would easily detect an issue way before it would become dangerous - but went through the modification, anyway when I took the car for the regular maintenance. It made no difference.

I'd say that MOST valid recalls will result in "no difference" to the individual. Recalls are generally done not because it is CERTAIN that a failure will occur, but rather that the RISK of failure is serious enough that 10s or 100s of thousands of cars should be recalled to prevent 10s or hundreds of failures.