Originally Posted by trobertson7
While electrical connections do corrode in time, most modern vehicle electrical systems use the chassis ground only for power circuits like the lighting and starting systems. The sensors as you described (temperature, flow and pressure) are 2-wire devices, and do not use the chassis ground as a reference (analog common). This is done to address many of the potential problems you mentioned, plus a few others like electromagnetic interference ("noise").
Absolutely right! All the critical sensors, including the digital ones, have a separate signal ground back to the ECU.