I agree with others that this problem skinks of an electrical/software issue.<p>Drive-by-wire <i>can</i> be made safe.  All fighter jets made since the 70s have been fly-by-wire.  Their airfoils are inherently unstable (unstable airframes are more maneuverable) and computers keep the plane from flopping out of the sky.  The yolk is a glorified joystick talking to a computer which controls the flight control surfaces.  Some aircraft even have programs for recovering from various emergencies (stall, flat-spin, etc).<p>I believe most comercial aircraft are fly-by-wire too, and I know all the Airbus planes are.<p>Doing fly-by-wire safely is done with a lot of very expensive QA, correctness proofs and redundancy.  If I remember right, all or most planes with fly-by-wire have 3 computers that all vote on how to move the control surfaces.  Those 3 computers' software is created in 3 completely separate groups in hopes that 2 groups won't have the same bug.  The voting system means a software single glitch or hardware failure doesn't result in a crash.<p>I really doubt Toyota (or any other car manufacturer) is putting that much effort into their embedded computers.  Hopefully this recall forces manufacturers to think more critically of these systems.