Sudden Acceleration Problem In Toyotas Caused By Cosmic Rays?

We've heard Toyota throw out a lot of excuses lately about its product line--everything from floor mats to sticky pedals to operator error--to help explain away the fact that for little or no reason their cars will, once you start them, apparently decide to speed up to a fraction of lightspeed in, say, your garage.

But one item that hasn't crossed a lot of people's minds is cosmic radiation. Yes, the stuff that made the Fantastic Four so fantastic is apparently a real thing, and it's been shown to affect airplane and spacecraft components. So is it possible that this cosmic radiation could be affecting the hardware under Toyota's hood?

They're called "single event upsets", and despite the fact that Toyota claims its hardware is "robust against this type of interference", industry insiders say that "the automotive industry has yet to truly anticipate SEUs". You may be wondering how to determine whether Toyota cars are vulnerable to cosmic radiation attack, but there's actually a simple test. Well, relatively simple, anyway--you just park a Camry in front of a particle accelerator and shoot radiation at it and wait to see what happens. If the car starts accelerating all on its own, it's got a problem with cosmic radiation.

And if it turns into a giant dinosaur and starts ravaging Detroit, it's a Michael Bay movie.

Seriously, though, the tests for radiation are relatively simple to carry out, but no one wants to even admit to the necessity. Think about what that would do for every car company's bottom line to release a press release that says: "We must recall EVERY SINGLE CAR on the road in order to shield it against invisible radiation from space.". And the worst part of all is is that this is FEASIBLE, if you listen to the insider reports. It's entirely possible that our heavily computer-dependent cars might well be subject to the whims of astronomical phenomena. That effectively means that virtually every car made in the last six to eight years or so might be at risk, and add this on to an already struggling auto sales sector and you've got a recipe for disaster in the car stock fields.

The possibility does exist--several engineers I know, however, are crying foul. The key thing here is that Toyota stock may REALLY not be a good place to put your savings, nor any other car manufacturer if this is as bad as some claim.