(perceived) regression for panics during boot

Having tried an upgrade from r365296 to r367410 I ran into a problem.
If a system panics during boot, then it does not automatically reboot.
It prints:
  Automatic reboot in 15 seconds - press a key on the console to abort
  --> Press a key on the console to reboot,
  --> or switch off the system now.

So, it looks like the system detects a (phantom) key press after it prints the
first line and then it (correctly) does not see any more key presses.

The result is that unattended systems just hang at the prompt.

I do not recall having this problem earlier.
Not sure where the regression could be.
Perhaps something changed in the keyboard initialization?

-- 
Andriy Gapon