“They actually calculated a value for each life expected to be lost and compared that with the cost of the design change.”
It may sound awful, but a lot of products go through the exact same formulations to this day. There was an article in an industry mag I saw that told the story of the passenger limitations of the Airbus A-380, the double-decker wide body jet. Engineers calculated enough seating for over 800 passengers, but the insurance companies told them to limit seat to 525 based on actuary tables and what they determined to be a maximum pay-out based on all lives lost.
I’m sure GM did a similar cost-benefit analysis on the ignition switch fiasco.
It is the same for all airlines. My bros. in law, a retired b52 pilot would never fly commercial airlines because of their much lower standards then the military. Obviously the planes were made for combat but he detested the comparably sub standard maintenance schedule on commercial planes as well as the compromised designs.
The attitude towards commercial airlines wasn’t much different for many of the other pilots we gave physicals to in the air force either.
Cars are no different. They are “relatively” much safer but no one can afford absolute. Inthe crash I mentioned earlier involving over a hundred cars, manay were mangled beyound recognition and no one died. One first responder at the scene said to a reporter, she will never complain about the cost of cars because of safety features. She was amazed after seeing the scene that no one lost their life.
I’m naïve enough to believe that car manufactures no longer use these calculations to determine whether to correct a design flaw that engineering analysis determines is highly likely to result in death in low speed collisions and is readily correctable with an already-defined engineering change. Or at least they don’t document these decisions on internal memos anymore…
And I of all people should know better. I’m going to intentionally not state the details, but I personally discovered a design flaw in a piece of laboratory equipment (a hydrogen generator) that had a high likelihood of causing the unit to explode after about a year’s use. The company’s executives elected to not make my recommended design change. Some units eventually exploded in use. I later learned that the problem was already known, but the estimated cost of recalling and correcting the units was determined to be “unacceptable”. I did absolutely everything I could to get the company executives to reconsider. I was not only overruled, but my recommendation was not well received. All evidence of the engineering analysis and the ECR was removed from the records. I left the company… and they gave me a fantastic buyout to maintain my confidentiality (yes, real “hush money”). They even immediately doubled the amount when I appeared to be considering not accepting it.
Auto makers are far, far less likely to intentionally ignore safely problems since Toyota agreed to pay a huge fine to avoid criminal prosecution. Since then, GM purged their backlog of safety issues and Honda even seems to be recalling autos with the Takata air bags outside the geographic area that the recall is active for. The only company balking at the new normal is Takata and the U.S. Govt fined them $14,000 per day until they comply with the records request. When it costs astonishing amounts of money not to comply, businessmen alter their thinking about the cost of compliance.
Regarding the Pinto issues, I still think that is overblown. Any car rammed from behind at high speed stands the risk of going up in flames and my vague memory seems to recall that Pinto was rammed at 70 MPH or something like that.
Pinto is only one make of car out of every one of them that had similar tank mountings in the Pinto era and beyond the Pinto era. SAAB, Subaru, VW, Mazda, Ford, you name it.
Some years ago a police officer died in flames after his Crown Vic was rammed from behind while he was parked. The guy who hit him was doing 80 MPH and with an impact like that a ruptured tank and fire is always a possibility.
As to cost/benefit Ford is just like all the rest also and the airlines are no exception either. They expect a plane to go down now and then and I’m sure the cost of a payout on each life is figured into the price of every ticket sold. Just another cost of doing business morbid as it may be.
Ok4450, in testing Pintos were rupturing tanks and catching fire under low speed impacts. Fords own internal memos showed that they knew the problem existed, had discovered it in their own in-house testing, had an ECR in house to fix it, and consciously chose to ignore it. It wasn’t malicious, but it was negligent.
My dad had a Pinto wagon then and just put a trailer hitch on it as reinforcement. Then I think of my VW with the gas tank up front, protected by only the sheet metal hood and the spare tire.
I do agree though that its just business 101 to calculate potential losses that include lives lost. I do the same myself trying to figure out how much insurance I’d need if I hit a bus load of kids. Ford I think though went beyond risk management which made them look very cold. It takes years to try and get your reputation back again which maybe should have been included in the calculation.
I think they might have also forgot to include the costs of the bad publicity and the federal investigation in their calculations. And I’m going to posit a wild guess that their internal response was aimed at those who put the problem in writing in internal memos.
It’s okay to put out a design that has a high probability of killing people. It’s not okay to write a memo about it.
@the same mountainbike by that logic any car of that era could erupt in flames from a low speed impact during testing. A '77 Pinto is no more dangerous than a '77 Subaru or VW Rabbit which I’m sure if tested in the same manner could go up in flames also.
Does Ford bury information? Sure, just like everyone else. The Ford TFI modules were said to be a problem by the engineers but revamping the modules would have cost millions so production went full speed ahead anyway. GM knew about switch complaints, Toyota knew about unintended acceleration problems, SAAB knew about caliper slide issues, Subaru knew about steering rack pinion springs, etc and things only get resolved when someone is backed into a corner.
How many aircraft have gone in with the loss of far more lives because some Airworthiness Directives were delayed due to politics or ignored after they were issued. There was the cargo door fiasco on the Boeing 747s for instance.
OK4450, all I can tell you is that as regards the Pinto NHTSA found otherwise. Other cars WERE tested in the same manner, and it was determined that the Pinto had a probability of causing fiery deaths far, far higher than the others… and some people did die in Pinto fires. It was also discovered in the investigation that Ford knew about the problem and chose to ignore it, A mistake for which Ford paid dearly.
Nothing personal. But it’s a part of automotive history that cannot be denied. The evidence was overwhelming. It’s all a matter of public record. All of the other stuff you mentioned don’t change the Pinto history.
Personally, I actually liked Pintos. I guess my taste was questionable even way back then.
I agree that the Pinto tanks could be a problem if the impact was just right and that FOMOCO (and others) are or should be criminally liable when things are covered up.
Millions of Pintos were manufactured and the percentage of fire jobs would be very low I would imagine. I made mention of Subaru as an example of having a just as dangerous, if not more so, design than the Pinto. Subaru sales numbers were nowhere near the Pinto and I have no idea if or how many Subarus went up in flames due to rear impacts. Maybe the percentage is the same.
As a side note, at the local dirt 3/8 mile race track here they used to run a class called Mini-Stock in which someone could go racing on a dime with small cars. This meant Mustang IIs, Corollas, etc and the most popular car in that class was the Pintos.
On a Saturday night it was common to see a 12 car field having half a dozen Pintos in it. It’s also why Pintos can’t be found easily here anymore. They’ve all been turned into race cars and wrecked and rolled, often repeatedly, until they were beyond hope. No fires though and fun racing to watch. Beats NASCAR.
I watched the high speed footage of a Pinto crash test and it was truly terrifying. I would never allow a loved one to be inside a car that performed that way in a crash test. Statistics show that the Pinto had a problem and Ford admitted that it did as well. Anecdotal belief that other cars has similar problems is unsupported by statistics and other evidence.
The reality is that manufacturers don’t have to make a perfect product but they do have a responsibility to produce a product that will not knowingly put you, the consumer, in jeopardy for flaws that could be reasonably fixed. Sadly, our system is rigged so that corporations can make actuarial decisions about lives versus costs. The decisions are mode solely based on profits. If tort reform ever passes the corporations will have truly won since our lives will have a limited value in a law suit. This will mean more “Ford Pinto decisions” by manufacturers. However, on the plus side, your coffee at McDonalds may once again be scalding hot…