Ford Pinto Ethics Essay

The moral issues about the Ford Pinto is that they take their profit is more important than human life. They also did not inform the consumer about the facts of the Pinto. Lastly, they also lobbied the safety of the car to lowest standard (Shaw, Barry & Sansbury 2009, pp 97-99).

The Elkhart County Grand Jury took up the matter and filed a charge of criminal homicide against Ford, the Automobile American Corporation that designed the Pinto car models. According to Elkhart County Grand prosecutor, Michael A. Cosentino, Ford was guilty of reckless homicide, because the company committed a conscious, plain, and unjustifiable neglect of harm that positioned the gas tank in the rear end of the car without proven protection. Besides, Ford engaged in negligence and substantial deviation from the acceptable standards of conduct. The major focus of the case entailed the expanding and assessment of acceptable standards the company violated in the process of manufacture of Pinto cars.

1970 to 1980 Ford Motor Company produced a car that stayed within “the limits of 2000.” This car would weight no more than 2,000 lbs. and wouldn’t cost the customer more than $2,000. This vehicle was extremely fuel efficient, easy on both the consumer and manufactures wallet, and quick to produce. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well it was, consumers loved the Ford Pinto, and Ford was pleased they were keeping up in a time when overseas dealers were threating their very existence; that was of course until it was found out Ford had faulty design and ignored the safety test findings, which resulted in an estimated 500 deaths. The cause of the deaths became one of the biggest ethical issues Ford Motors has dealt with: cutting cost vs. human life.

1. The message that the author gives in this article is that Ford completely disregards safety and ethics when making the Ford Pinto. Not only does Ford disregard safety, but they also try to cover up the fact that they are killing many people in the process. The author, gives many examples, and puts emphasis on the fact that Ford took seven years to fix the Pinto problem. The author says that Ford was a case of corporate malpractice in the auto industry. 2.

The humankind history has probably never known one completely successful product - a product that would never break down or malfunction. "The ideal product is a myth because in reality, there has been and always will be mistakes and flaws in the technology and production. When there are only a small percentage of defective pieces, it is easy to blame the individual product. It is when there is repetitive malfunction of the same system under the same conditions that people begin to ask the question." (Birch, et. al. 21) Who is at fault? Is it the production line error? Is it the engineer who designed it, or the person who developed the process? Ford Pinto is one of the examples of such repeated malfunction of a product,

Introduction This memo is a failure analysis report on the Ford Pinto automobile accidents. On 28th May, 1972 a 1972 Ford Pinto car (manufactured by Ford Motors) burst into flames after a 30 Miles Per Hour (mph) collision caused an immediate fire burning down the car killing the driver, Lily Gray (Leggett, Christopher 1999). According to public record, more than 500 people have been killed from Ford Pinto crash burnings (Dowie, Mark 1977). The ensuing sections of this report outline the events leading up to the design and production of faulty Ford Pintos, the rationale behind the failure, and the lessons that can be grasped from this failure.

The national spotlight is dominated today with the debate over how much control should the government have in an individual’s life. With this in mind the question is asked, should the government be allowed to dictate the quality of gasoline that individuals use in their vehicles? Unbeknownst to consumers the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved the sale of E15 gasoline which contains harmfully high levels of ethanol. John Tomlin states, a “recent survey showed that a majority of consumers (95 percent) had not heard of E15 gasoline or the damage it may cause” (1). Is it ethical for the government to make this determination without notifying the public? Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ethical behavior as, “following accepted

In the Ford Pinto cases of the 1970s and 1980s, society and the government let Ford take the easier and cheaper way out. There was a design flaw in the gas tanks that caused horrific burn deaths and injuries. Ford could have fixed the problem, but chose to pay injury and death claims instead. Afflitto (2015) showed that Ford figured they could spend $49.5 million to settle injury and death claims versus $137 million to fix the problem. To this day, it is one of the largest corporate crimes in history. Ford put saving money over saving lives. At the time, our country was facing many other economic issues and they probably help keep this issue under wraps. Personally, I think Ford should still be paying penalties for their decision.

Generally, people cannot be killed, deceived, denied their freedom or otherwise violated simply to bring about a greater total amount of utility. It would have been ethically better if Ford consider the Rights of Persons as they were making decisions for the Pinto design. They must identify the basic obligations, values, and interests at stake, noting any conflicts that could be encountered by their potential customers. The action or rule that is to be taken must be analysed so that options and what rights are at stake will be clear. Next, the audience of the action must be determined, in this case, be the drivers and passengers that would be riding Pinto.

Consider a notorious case that, when it broke, had every one of the reserves of cognizant top-down debasement. The Ford Pinto, a conservative auto created amid the 1970s, got to be infamous for its inclination in backside impacts to break fuel and blast into flares. More than two dozen individuals were murdered or harmed in Pinto fires before the organization issued a review to rectify the issue. Investigation of the choice process behind the model's dispatch uncovered that under serious rivalry from Volkswagen and other little auto makers, Ford had surged the Pinto into generation. Specialists had found the potential risk of burst fuel tanks in preproduction accident tests, however the mechanical production system was prepared to go, and the organization's pioneers chose to continue. Numerous saw the choice as confirmation of the hardness, eagerness, and duplicity of Ford's pioneers so, their profound unethicality.

Those cars made after 1973 have to withstand a 30 mph fixed-barrier impact. The Pinto failed to meet both of these standards before release and upon release. Was Ford simply answering a public demand for a small, fuel-efficient, and inexpensive auto? They were yes, however doing so while knowingly endangering lives, is not the correct or ethical way to provide a product that is demanded by the market.

Since Ford was too eager to sell Pinto cars, lack of future up to date safety regulations were overlooked, leading to the action of falsifying EPA emission data. This was dishonest to patrons which definitely was

The first was to fix the issue at a cost of approximately eighteen dollars in parts per vehicle. In doing the repair, Ford would have significantly increased the safety of the vehicle. The second option was for Ford to ignore the problem based on a cost analysis, finding that it would be cheaper to leave Pinto as is and pay out lawsuit settlements in the event the vehicles caught fire due to collision. It is clear that the parties involved in these actions were Ford Motor Company and the consumers that purchased the Ford Pinto. The next step is to determine how these actions affect the happiness of those

Christopher Nagel and David Cabrera presented the Ford Pinto rear-impact defect, with Christopher going first. He explained that the purpose of the Pinto was to compete in the automobile industry with its German and Japanese counterparts. It was a compact and inexpensive car that anyone would have been able to purchase. However, Christopher revealed that the Pinto had a major defect in its fuel compartment. A single impact at about 35mph resulted in a fiery explosion, which ultimately cut the Pinto’s career short. In addition, like Chernobyl, the engineers knew of the defect but remained silent in fear of losing their job. Christopher concluded with the ethics that an engineer needs to uphold as well as a few quotes from former engineers involved

Shortly after, in 1977 the newspaper called Mother Johns published an article talking about how dangerous Ford Pinto actually is and how they introduced it to the market knowing of its flaws with the gas tanks, they also accused Ford Corporation of lobbying, and supplying false information for more than 8 years, which would result in preventing the new 301 safety standards to be implemented into the car productions. The new 301 safety standards require any car gas tank to withstand a hit of 20mph without exploding and bursting into flames. The accusations are based on the information gathered by the NHTS (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), the agency found out that every year 3000 people burn and die in their cars. The important statistic to know is that in that time 24 percent of all the cars driving on the American roads where Ford cars, and 42 percent of all the cars accidents resulting in the gas tank explosions involve a Ford brand car. Ford hired some very expensive lawyers that defended the company in various ways, they admitted that the safety tests were only performed on the front of the car and not on the rear, they also admitted that the improvements on the gas tank would cost them a fortune and would result in a loss of catastrophic proportions. But since the 301 safety standards were not yet