That's interesting. I haven't had an SD card fail that I recall.

How do you define "failure"? Malfunction after abuse? A well-sealed card
might continue to operate even after a salt-water dunking, and a
poorly-sealed card after same, followed by a thorough rinsing in fresh water
(then by a drying).

Of course, the memory cells can only be written to and erased a finite
number of times. Each card supposedly has its own internal OS that handles
"leveling" -- seeing to it that the cells are written to and erased evenly.
Even so, I let my camera cards fill up before transferring their contents to
a hard drive or Zip disk. Then I erase and reformat the card.