I can tell you easily why mine crapped out. It looks as if the contacts got stuck on the inside and melted the plastic. This caused the contact to not touch correctly and the sensor did not function correctly. If you still have the old sensor take it apart and look at how extremely poor quality a part it is. For being so importnat they sure as hell made it as cheap as possible. I was having to manually push on the sensor while pulling on the shifter to get it into gear. I actually took mine apart and tried to get it to work, but too much plastic was melted for it to operate smoothly.
Glad the easy & cheap fix was the cure. And btw guys, he's not talking about the e-brake light that comes on, he is talking about the actual brake lights in the taillights.