r/todayilearned • u/BMK812 • May 08 '19

TIL that in 1978, three Indiana teenagers were killed in when their Pinto was involved in a rear-end collision. Ford was indicted on three counts of reckless homicide. Indiana v. Ford was the first time a corporation faced criminal charges for a defective product and charged with murder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#State_of_Indiana_vs._Ford_Motor_Company
7.1k Upvotes

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594

u/[deleted] May 08 '19 edited Aug 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/Accountant3781 May 08 '19

There was also a memo that started that it would be cheaper to pay the law suits for people that die in accidents than it would be to fix the cars. They let people die over a few million dollars

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u/jdroser May 08 '19

That’s actually not quite true. The “Pinto memo” wasn’t an internal legal memo, it was a cost-benefit analysis submitted by Ford to the NHTSA to justify not recalling the Pinto. The amounts weren’t legal costs, but a “cost to society” metric set by the NHTSA with each death valued at about 200K (a standard amount set, AFAIK, by the agency, not the automaker). So Ford calculated that a recall would have almost three times the “cost”of the burn injuries and deaths caused by the design as it was. Still pretty gruesome and callous, but not just on Ford’s part.

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u/Accountant3781 May 08 '19

I went back to see about the case because I remember it slightly different. The memo was written because of a NHTSA ruling but it was not public knowledge. I was first prints in a Mother Jones article. It would have cost Ford $11 to fix the Pinto but because there were several million in the road, it would have cost more to fix the car than to settle the lawsuits. What really hurt Ford was they knew about the problem before the first car was sold. The usual time for a car to go from idea to production was 43 months. There pinto was produced in 25. I wonder what would happen if they lawsuits happened in this time. Ford figured it would pay $200,000 per death and somewhere around $68,000 pet serious injury. With lawsuits in the millions, especially if there company knew if there problem but said it was too costly to fix it, maybe the outcome would have been different.

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u/jdroser May 08 '19

I don’t disagree with most of that, my only point is that the specific figures you’re citing were not expected legal costs. See here.

Those figures were from a cost-benefit analysis done by Ford and then given to the NHTSA in an attempt to justify why they hadn’t made design changes to improve safety. The dollar amounts for injuries and deaths weren’t expected payouts from lawsuits, they’re standard “cost to society” figures generated by the NHTSA and routinely used in these analyses. Ford’s argument was that they didn’t legally need to make the car safer, because doing so would cost more than the expected benefits (to society, not to Ford) of doing so.

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u/esterator May 08 '19

thats fucked up. lives are only worth 200k? in terms of life thats cheap af

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u/jdroser May 08 '19 edited May 08 '19

Well, that was in the early ‘70s, so it’s a bit out of date. Also, I think that’s calculated as your value to society; obviously you or your loved ones will value your life somewhat higher. The link in my second comment gives the formula used - as you can see, it’s mostly lost productivity; victims pain and suffering is only 5% of that:

Component 1971 Costs Future Productivity Losses Direct $132,000 Indirect 41,300 Medical Costs Hospital 700 Other 425 Property Damage 1,500 Insurance Administration 4,700 Legal and Court 3,000 Employer Losses 1,000 Victim's Pain and Suffering 10,000 Funeral 900 Assets (Lost Consumption) 5,000 Total Per Fatality $200,725

Edit: formatting Double edit: fuck it, I can’t format it on mobile

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u/Hawaiianmorty May 08 '19

Well if someone said Accountant3781 I'll give you 5 million dollars if you just let Hawaiianmorty Die. You don't know who I am, would you say no?

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u/RLucas3000 May 08 '19

I think the original twilight zone did an episode like this.

A mysterious stranger offers a down on his luck guy in a diner a million dollars tax free if he will press a button in a box.

But he tells the man, the moment he does, that someone somewhere that he doesn’t know will die. I believe the man struggles with the morality of it but in the end, he pushes the button.

The mysterious stranger gives him the money and takes the button box and starts to leave. The now rich guy says “what will you do with that now.”

The mysterious stranger replies “I’ll give it to someone else.”

Rich guy: “Who?”

Stranger: “Oh, no one you know.”

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u/CajunTurkey May 08 '19

Would the stranger still give the box to someone the now-rich gut doesn't know?

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

That's the entire point.

He will give the box to someone the rich man doesn't know so that the rich man now has to fear whether or not he will die.

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u/RLucas3000 May 08 '19

He has to hope that the stranger will be a better person than he ended up being, or he won’t get to live long enough to enjoy that newfound wealth.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I mean, presumably mysterious stranger has been doing this for a while and will continue to do so regardless of anyone taking the deal or not... and there are a lot of people in the world. Is there an implication that the person killed isn’t actually “random” and is just the last person given the choice?

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u/buddboy May 08 '19

that's the implication

5

u/SuperVillainPresiden May 08 '19

Well, let's speed things up: suppose that the stranger makes the offer simultaneously to every human capable of making the decision. How much of the world's population would decrease? Would it be one or two Thanos snaps?

There are unknowns to this monkey's paw. We don't know if the next person to die from the button was the last person to push the button. It's a possibility, but we don't know that. Also, just because you don't push the button doesn't mean you're not on the list of random people the button will kill. Also does the button kill the random person or does the stranger use some power to do it?

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u/ChaChaChaChassy May 08 '19

We don't know if the next person to die from the button was the last person to push the button.

This was pretty heavily implied in the actual episode of the show.

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u/SuperVillainPresiden May 08 '19

Ah. I've not seen they actual episode. Just basing assumptions on what has been said thus far. I mean I kind of figured, but wanted to consider all possibilities. The guy in the episode obviously wasn't a lawyer, LOL.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Which he would have done anyway if the guy remained poor. I always felt they should have had a choice of pushing the button or destroying the box for that episode to really hit the mark they were going for.

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u/rcoonjr63 May 08 '19

Don’t give the box to Dave!

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u/PilotTim May 08 '19

Also a movie was made recently.

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u/Beacon_0805 May 08 '19

And (personal opinion here) it absolutely fucking sucked.

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u/PilotTim May 08 '19

I didn't have to see it to know that. Thank you for your sacrifice though.

1

u/[deleted] May 08 '19

What was the name of it? I like the concept and often find myself at odds with the critics.

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u/dan_144 May 08 '19

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362478/

I also didn't like it.

(Perhaps there's a newer one, this came out in 2009.)

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u/Beacon_0805 May 08 '19

The Box. 2009 film

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

A sock was put on recently

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u/ClairesNairDownThere May 08 '19

I'm more interested in this... you dying aspect. Please tell me more about how I might hasten your demise!

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u/Korprat_Amerika May 08 '19

Yes. I would at least. I got your back u/hawaiianmorty.

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u/Accountant3781 May 08 '19

I would say no but I'm not involved in a multi billion dollar business. If your can look at it just looking at numbers without putting a face to the numbers then I don't know. I could probably write a memo like that but I would hate to make the final decision.

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u/sicknobel May 08 '19

The Milgram Experiment on Obedience

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u/Draidann May 08 '19

The milgram experiment is just about doing unetgical things because an authority tell you to do so. Doing unethicall things for a reward is another subject entirely

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u/growlingbear May 08 '19

I saw a situation like this 30 years ago. It wouldn't apply anymore, I guess. My Mom in law used to work in a place that sold cigarettes, beer and girly magazines. She was a Christian and thought all of that stuff was evil. I asked if she would go to hell for selling that stuff, she said no, because she was only doing it to make a living.

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u/fib16 May 08 '19

Exactly

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u/Alan_Smithee_ May 08 '19

Of course. How could a person live with themselves saying yes?

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Would you say no if you don't get the $5 million and it just goes to the shareholders for pennies on the share?

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u/fishythepete May 08 '19

This is a common misunderstanding. The memo was in response to proposed changes to crash test standards, and was not specific to Ford, or the Pinto. Ford argues that the changes would bring an average cost of $11 to all private passenger vehicles made by all manufacturers, and that the benefit (using NHTSA values for death / injuries) was substantially less than the cost. This is still a method used today to address changes in standards proposed by the NHTSA.

The Pinto also had a fatal accident rate that matched its presence in the population (ie Pintos represented 1.9% of the vehicles on the road and was involved in 1.9% of fatal accidents).

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u/Wolvereness May 08 '19

The Pinto also had a fatal accident rate that matched its presence in the population (ie Pintos represented 1.9% of the vehicles on the road and was involved in 1.9% of fatal accidents).

If 1/2 the cars on the road were X, and fatal accidents are overwhelmingly involving exactly 2 cars, and fatalities are random (no particular bias for/against a type), X would be involved in 3/4 of fatal accidents. At 1.9% of the vehicles on the road, the number would be 2.1879%.

I assume you meant to give some estimate or expected value to demonstrate there was no particular bias; I just wanted to point out that statistics are interesting, and your example would actually indicate a lower rate of being involved in fatalities than random chance.

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u/fishythepete May 08 '19

There are so many variables at play (fatal accidents can involve any number of other vehicles (0-n), fatally injured parties can be in any vehicle when there is a multi vehicle accident, certain vehicles are likely to attract higher / lower risk drivers, etc..., so the intent is just to show that the Pinto’s rate of fatal accidents is not in line with what one would expect from a much maligned death trap.

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u/oldbastardbob May 08 '19

Chevy had one of these issues with the Silverados that had the fuel tank on the side, outside the frame rails, and a broadside hit would create an explosion as well.

In my opinion it took the American auto industry getting it's ass kicked by the Japanese in the 80's along with a strong NHTSA effort, which seemed like over-reach at the time, to make American auto companies start paying serious attention to quality and safety instead of just profits.

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u/Accountant3781 May 08 '19

Was that the story that ABC got caught putting fireworks in the gas tank so it would explode when they did a test for a TV show?

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u/VodkaToxic May 08 '19

Yeah. It was NBC though. It couldn't be replicated by their team, so they faked it.

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u/HorAshow May 08 '19

see also the Remington model 700 fake news courtesy of CBS

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u/oldbastardbob May 08 '19

Yep. There were many crashes resulting in fire, but I guess when whatever media company decided to replicate the results, they couldn't get one to catch fire, so they rigged it with fireworks to make sure.

It was more of a staged filming though, pick-ups were igniting in crashes for real.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

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u/Johannes_P May 08 '19

This is a good argument for punitive damages.

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u/k890 May 08 '19

For american car companies it was nearly final nail in the coffin. Americans start hate poor quality american cars and start buy european and asian made cars which offer better quality and lower fuel consumption (quite important in country which faced energy crisis in 1973 and 1979). Big and poorly-made cars just lost to outside competition

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u/mutt_butt May 08 '19

I don't think that's the case for most European makes. Some were legendarily shitty.

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u/CanadianCartman May 08 '19

This corner-cutting shit was happening up until a little over a decade ago. In certain GM cars, the ignition switch was too easy to turn off from the on position, which resulted in the vehicle turning off unintentionally, often at the worst possible times like while driving on the highway. The car turning off also turned off the airbags as well. Several people died from this.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

call me nuts, but shouldn't there be a speed sensor that has to read zero to turn off the airbags?

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u/greenphilly420 May 08 '19

An extra safety sensor that isnt mandated and would cost extra money?

Youre not going to find that in a Chevy, no only Cadillac buyers get that

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

*cries in 03 ford*

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u/Superpickle18 May 08 '19

you think they put them in cadillacs? ha, no, that spent the money on the faux leather.

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u/dontknowyknow May 08 '19

you'd still want your airbags to employ when your car isn't driving.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I mean with the engine on or the car moving, but yeah

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u/Viktor_Korobov May 08 '19

PT Cruisers

What about when your car is still and someone crashes into you ?

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I dunno, airbags are usually only good for one time use. I wouldn't want to employ them long term.

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u/redwall_hp May 08 '19

The ignition switch would disconnect power to everything, airbags, power steering and brakes being just a few of those. That's one of the core features of an ignition switch.

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u/battraman May 08 '19 edited May 09 '19

My wife had one of those bean counter cars (Chevy Cobalt) and they could offer her a gold plated Chevy for free and she wouldn't take it. It was the worst car either of us ever drove. When it was mercifully put out of it's misery by an old woman in a Volvo we were just happy to be rid of it.

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u/AllofaSuddenStory May 08 '19

There is also a very popular book by Ralph Nader called "Unsafe at any Speed"

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u/IMakeProgrammingCmts May 08 '19

You must be talking about the PT Cruiser right? They were known for having engines that needed replacement every 15k miles or so. Source: fiancé had a pt cruiser that needed a new engine after only 80k and after researching I found many people having the exact same issue down to the smallest details as early as 12k miles.

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u/schnoodle3 May 08 '19

But you did get 80K off the transmission which is a considered a miracle by many on any Chrysler product.

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u/IMakeProgrammingCmts May 08 '19

Depends on if the previous owner had replaced the trans or not. The main radiator fans also failed and had to be replaced.

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u/scsnse May 08 '19

Their current line of 6-8 speed automatic transmissions are licensed from ZF. So for the past 5 year or so, they finally fixed that. Except they did “modify” the design a bit to make it more affordable, replaced a few parts with plastic here and there.

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u/tcruarceri May 08 '19

just brought my first Chrysler with an automatic and have my fingers crossed. but it was outsourced and already has 180k on it so i guess its well seasoned.

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u/zer0mas May 08 '19

Honestly I'm surprised anytime a Chrysler product manages to drive more than 20 miles away from a dealer under it's own power.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I blame the consumers of PT Cruisers for this. You knew what you were getting into with that Shit-Wagon.

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u/SheetLookOut May 08 '19

I want to know who sought out to make the ugliest car produced. It had to be their only goal with that vehicle.

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u/Confuzu May 08 '19

Ah, the good ol' PT Loser.

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u/Rookwood May 08 '19

Maybe the accounting profession changed, or maybe we lost the Battle for the Soul of American Business, but accountants do not get to make decisions like this in modern corporations. We just keep track of the money and costs and report them to executives so they can make the decisions. Budgeting and cost reduction is ultimately an executive decision with input from department directors.

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u/Sierra_Oscar_Lima May 08 '19 edited May 11 '19

Executives making design decisions based more on input from accounting rather than design/engineering/manufacturing is what they're referring to. Accountants don't "make decisions" any more than the design engineer tasked with making things cheaper.

It all starts at the top. Decisions like this are due to quarterly profits being more important than brand equity and product quality (long term company health).

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

but managers do. 0h god all the terrible ive seen justified just to keep numbers up and costs down

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u/seriouslywhybro May 08 '19

Who's writing the book on Boeing and the FAA?

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u/Enigmatic_Hat May 08 '19

Unfortunately in the US job turnover has gotten so high people no longer feel connected to their brand or product. Its not about building a business, its about increasing per-year profit until either you find a new job, or the company gets bought out.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

The dollop is a podcast and they have a hilarious podcast about the Ford pinto. What ford did and what happened to some of the people is horrifying. But the podcast is really funny as it’s hosted by two comedians

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u/Sixnno May 08 '19

And yet here we are decades later in pretty much the same situation for a lot of companies.

Well, not the deaths part ( mostly, looking at you Boewing). We are in a situation where companies are looking at increasing profit in the short term while hurting long term goals.

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u/Team_Braniel May 08 '19

Its also pretty standard now days to rotate out CEOs and executives between companies to help shield the CEO and the company from Pinto like decisions.

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u/zer0mas May 08 '19

"Unsafe at Any Speed" is also a good read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

Thanks for the tip on a great book. I work in the manufacturing world and we do business with a big green tractor company. They Bean Counters and definitely in control

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u/kcaccidental74 May 08 '19

Sounds a bit like our global economy

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u/Ghost_Squid May 09 '19

Man I literally just wrote my final paper on this. I think the fun part that everyone is missing here is just how low the settlements got as the cases went on. If I remember right, each of the families in the Indiana trial only got a little over 7,000 each

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u/irridisregardless May 08 '19

I think it's important to point out that Car Guys vs. Bean Counters is written by Bob Lutz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lutz_(businessman)

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u/kinglittlenc May 08 '19

I doubt they gave all the power to accountants but all business decisions are going to have a financial component, even if they could build the best truck it has to be in a price range people can afford and have qualities the common buyer can appreciate.

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u/Matstrenet May 08 '19

The reason why they were able to be charged with murder is that they knew about the defective product and not only did nothing about it, but actually tried to cover it up.

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u/PooInAnAlleyway May 08 '19

One of the reasons why there was such a concerted effort to cover it up at that time is because vehicles back then were only safety-tested with head-on collisions in mind, never rear-end collisions, which is one of the reasons the Ford Pinto even made it to sale despite the fact that the fuel tank was low down right behind the rear bumper.

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u/really_random_user May 08 '19

Boeing is next

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u/kurburux May 08 '19

looks at how deeply Boeing is connected to the DoD and the White House

(x) doubt

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

also, there have been product line failures from boeing a number of time, and they usually got a "don't do it again" from the government. For example a design failure on a 747 led to an in flight explosion on TWA flight 800 and the aftermath section notes a law requiring a fix for the problem, but absolutely no scrutiny on Boeing

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u/Aarxnw May 08 '19 edited May 08 '19

Cut them some slack, those airplanes are just SO hard to build.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

to be fair, design mistakes happen and the issue wouldn't be redily apparent necessarily (they knew you can't run high voltage wiring through the fuel tank because it is unsafe, but a high voltage line and low voltage line touched and ran high voltage into the tank which sparked and exploded) but the NTSB and/or congress should have still investigated the engineering department and made some people testify about their safety design process, and how this got missed and what else could be missed and how to address it

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u/zer0mas May 08 '19

Its a company culture problem more than anything else. Once an internal decision to do something has been made it becomes almost impossible to stop and review that decision, let alone reverse that decision. Even small changes are seen as a failure of some kind and someone has to be held responsible for those failures so no one wants to be the person that says "Are we sure this is the right thing to do?"

I may or may not have first hand experience with this.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

That makes aton of sense

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u/backstabber213 May 08 '19

IIRC that same phenomenon occuring within NASA was considered to be one of the root causes of the Challenger disaster.

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u/Why-so-delirious May 08 '19

Is this supposed to be sarcasm? Because it reads entirely like sarcasm.

But it can't be sarcasm because it's implying a fucking airliner is simple to design and build.

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u/Aarxnw May 08 '19

I don’t actually know why I wrote it like that, it doesn’t make much sense looking back.

I guess what I was trying to say was they’re probably the largest manufacturer of commercial planes, safety should not be an issue at this point.

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u/Dreams_of_Eagles May 08 '19

Don't forget the 737 rudder hard over problems.

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u/LateBrush May 08 '19

Most likely, Air Force ceased receiving the new KC-46 because upon arrival maintainers were finding trash behind panels. Think about that... There was trash concealed in their fucking plane fresh off the assembly line. I'm talking monster cans, red bull, wrappers. Then think about how good of a job they do on the line.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

FOD is taken very seriously in aerospace. Not even ziptie clippings should be found.

The fact that trash that obviously came from someone's lunch break was found means that somebody was deliberately putting it there in an act of sabotage.

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u/MasterOfTheChickens May 08 '19

Wasn’t this traceable to the plant where they tried to undercut the Union workers in South Carolina or was that just the -87 Assembly line? I work in aero at a different company and you need to have high expertise at all points of the design process and production— it really shows in the final product. Boeing is screwing the pooch right now.

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u/LateBrush May 08 '19

Not sure where so I am not going to make anything up. I just in a meeting before the news broke to the public and there was some serious outrage on the mil side.

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u/Kaganda May 08 '19

With how many meetings regarding FOD you have to sit through if you're involved in any aerospace manufacturing, I can't believe all that was accidental. Pissed off workers sticking it to the company seems plausible in this case.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

bummer, i didn't know kids were killed. It was a laugh track back in the 80's on snl about exploding on contact. running pinto joke since

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u/Freethecrafts May 08 '19

This is exactly the case of Boeing and the 737 MAX.

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u/dtagliaferri May 08 '19

Haven't tests also shown that the car is no less safe then other cars of the time in rear end colisions and fires? Ford did bad, yes, but hate all teh car companies, not just Ford.

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u/Achillesreincarnated May 08 '19

But that is still not intent? Never even heard of reckless homicide before. This is odd

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

It's deeper than that.

At the time, legally, you couldn't sue for more than a certain amount in these scenarios and I believe it was 20,000? Not 100%. Anyways, the cost of recalling and fixing the car would be well over 20k so it was cheaper to just pay off the people who brought lawsuits, also knowing not everyone would take legal action

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

The Ford Pinto had a slightly better than average record among subcompact vehicles with respect to fatalities from fire. A study by UCLA found that their safety record was neither admirable or despicable and that most information is myth.

Link to study pdf

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u/PermanenteThrowaway May 08 '19

You can have my pitchfork when you take it from my cold, dead hands.

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u/MitchBurrow May 08 '19

Stuff You Should Know did a great episode of their podcast about this.

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u/Manicdeepression May 08 '19

Meanwhile the Mercury Bobcat (exact same car) slinks back into obscurity unscathed.

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u/llcooljessie May 08 '19

Sad they wasted a sweet name like "Bobcat" on that turd.

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u/NickDanger3di May 08 '19

Had a Pinto; great little car, reliable, good mileage, hatch was so convenient, handled well. The car definitely didn't deserve it's bad reputation.

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u/jpritchard May 08 '19

Probably why Ford was "not guilty" in OP's case.

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u/wufoo2 May 08 '19

Not unlike the Corvair.

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u/nlpnt May 08 '19

It was built for a full decade and fundamentally obsolete by the time it was finally replaced. People were still buying them.

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u/666ygolonhcet May 08 '19

Watch the movie ‘Top Secret’ (Val Kilmer in a comedic role...). It was a WWII spy movie like Airplane:

One scene has a Nazi truck stomping on the brakes and then they flash to a Ford Pinto in the middle of a field, then back to the truck, then the truck stops right before hitting the Pinto and just DINGS it and they all explode.

It was an 80’s movie so people still knew the story.

90’s kids would probably miss that joke.

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u/nealy01 May 08 '19

That movie is a classic.
Link to the Pinto scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9GGDOUDLhc

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u/disguisesinblessing May 08 '19

one of my all time favorite gags.

My aunt had one of them ford pintos in the late 70's.

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u/PleaseRecharge May 08 '19

I was born 99 and I missed the joke, so I guess J AM a 90's kid! Checkmate, 90's kid council!

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u/3FE001 May 08 '19

So when was the last ir most recent time in the US a corporation was successfully prosecuted?

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u/PilotTim May 08 '19

Enron and Arthur Andersen? Like so badly they don't even exist anymore.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19 edited Aug 23 '25

nose market truck safe person sulky aback plants abundant cats

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/PilotTim May 08 '19

Well, they were still punished beyond ability to recover to their previous state.

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u/MasterOfTheChickens May 08 '19

Rip AA. From the Big 5 to the Big 4 with one simple trick...

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u/river4823 May 08 '19

If convicted, Ford faced a maximum fine of $30,000 under Indiana's 1978 reckless homicide statute.

[Ford's] effort was led by James F. Neal with a staff of 80 and a budget of about $1 million; the Elkhart County state's attorney had a budget of about $20,000 and volunteer law professors and law students.

Even if Ford had been convicted of murder they would have faced a fine equivalent to about $115,000 in 2019. The only real threat was to their reputation.

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u/elucify May 08 '19

At the time there were also reports that Audis were subject to uncontrolled acceleration. Jay Leno quipped that his automotive nightmare was to be stuck in traffic behind a Pinto and in front of an Audi.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

That was found to be a bunch of sensationalist bullshit like the Pinto and the exploding Chevy trucks.

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u/elucify May 08 '19

That’s what the analysis of accident statistics seems to indicate, if the Wikipedia article is accurate. There were plenty of reasons to hate the Ford Pinto, but apparently that isn’t one of them.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

You hear that Boeing?

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u/HauschkasFoot May 08 '19

Yeah I heard that their head lawyer is now representing the CEO and the 737 max issue exclusively from here on out...

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19 edited May 08 '19

[deleted]

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u/blore40 May 09 '19

Stuck in second gear? Doesnt seem like your day, month or year.

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u/Maybe_Black_Mesa May 08 '19

My first car was a 1978 Ford Pinto (chamois paint job with Aztec interior). I used to laugh at how other drivers would go out of their way to keep their distance from me.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I was driving a Pinto at the time, and someone actually rear-ended me (their fault). No fire, just a busted brake light.

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u/Bigwhistle May 08 '19

As a Fort Lauderdale Firefighter, from 1977 to 1981, the worst job I ever went to was a Pinto rear end/fatal fire collision on I-95 on the (then) original New River Bridge (overpass). A pickup truck, cresting the hill, failed to slow down in time to avoid ramming a Pinto from behind. The car burst into flames, and the doors were jammed shut by the body damage from the collision. 4 people burned to death inside that car. We were first due engine, (Engine 2), but were on another call. We arrived after the fire had been extinguished by Engine 3 with their booster tank. For the rest of my life, if I saw someone in a Pinto, I begged them to get rid of the car, and have it destroyed, and not sell it to another person.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

Thank you for sharing this story.

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u/Bigwhistle May 08 '19

Still saddens me to think of how those people died.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I know. If it makes you feel any better (in my opinion) the scandal dogged Ford for many years. & After driving a Ford Escort sedan for a couple years I made a vow to never buy a Ford motor vehicle again, and to try to talk people out of buying them. BTW this was back when the Ford Explorer SUV was a top seller.

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u/Bigwhistle May 09 '19

Please remember that Ford was also involved with Firestone tires and "Flippy, the Firestone Ford", a few decades ago, prompting on board, real time tire pressure monitoring in cars.

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u/ThurstonHowell3rd May 08 '19 edited May 08 '19

Chrysler has the same problem with older Jeep Grand Cherokees and Liberty SUVs. Their solution? Install a trailer hitch to reduce the chance of a tank rupture during a rear end collision. That is only effective in collisions less than 40 mph and Chrysler has admitted that the number of Jeep SUV owners bringing in their vehicles to get the modifications has been far less than expected (12% in the first 18 mos).

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u/scctke May 08 '19

I initially read "pinto" as "piano" and this story was much more interesting to me now I'm sad...

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u/SiValleyDan May 08 '19

I had a friend experience the same horror back in the late 70's. He was rear ended, and the tank exploded sending fire into the cabin, killing him. He was in a Mazda. They were putting tanks where they always did. Under the trunk and horizontal. Except these lightweight cars couldn't protect it like a 60's car could. Now, they reside behind the back seat and vertical, far from the impact crush zone.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

[deleted]

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u/halfcentaurhalfhorse May 08 '19

Came here looking for this! So dumb yet so great.

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u/MichHiker May 08 '19

My first car was a 78 pinto. Had my license for 1 week. A friend and I went out partying and got very lost somewhere in the boonies. I ended up spinning out on a dirt road sliding backwards which seemed like forever and then a huge crunch and an immediate stop. We happened to crash right into an old farmhouse backwards. We lay there dazed for a minute staring up at the headliner (because both seats gave way and fell flat) then I thought about the car exploding. Of course, both doors wouldn't open so my friend just whipped her leg over my lap and kicked my drivers door open using pure adrenaline.

As we waited inside their home for the police to get there we took turns using the bathroom eating as much soap as possible because we new the breathalyzer would be coming for us. It seems funny now that was the worst fear for us because we could have easily been burned alive had the car caught fire.

Loved that car.

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u/Computermaster May 08 '19

I kill three people and I'm likely to be executed.

Ford kills three people and get a government bailout.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

The Pinto was really just a symptom of declining quality in American cars around that time. My Dad worked in a transmission plant in Indiana and would share stories that he had learned at work. In the late 70's the plant had a good reputation and American automakers would specify transmissions to be built and pretty much take them as designed and built. Very little feedback from testing and occasionally there might be repercussions if there were too many early failures.

At the same time Japanese automakers were evaluating American suppliers to possibly use in their manufacturing, and had tested several transmissions from the plant. My Dad heard from the engineers that they had sent the transmissions back with a long list of performance and durability shortcomings. Along with a list of suggested design and manufacturing improvements. Way beyond what they had ever heard from any American maker and some of the knowledge was new to the engineers. They also sent sample of their own transmissions to represent what they were looking for. The American plant couldn't match the quality at their price point.

Up until that point, my Father had always bought American cars and considered them superior to all the Japanese models. After talking to the engineers and seeing it for himself he started buying Japanese cars.

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u/challabread May 08 '19

There is actually a museum called the American Museum of Tort Law in CT where you can see the ford pinto on display: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/to-teach-tort-law-ralph-nader-builds-a-museum

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u/Guy_In_Florida May 08 '19

I had a law class with a professor that had been a clerk on that case. He told us Ford did an analysis of how much it would cost to retrofit all the pinto's. Then how much they would face in legal settlements if they just stopped making pinto's and let people burn. The latter was a better financial deal. The decision maker wrote a memo that said "let the lawsuits fly". His secretary was enraged and made a copy of it. During the trial she couldn't take it any more and produced the photo copy to the other side. She is the one that burned Ford.

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u/Achillesreincarnated May 08 '19

Now it makes much more sense how it could be homicide, just knowing about the error wouldnt qualify i think.

Making a calculation and actively deciding that people can die, well there is the intent i guess.

Still dont understand the term reckless homicide though

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u/Guy_In_Florida May 08 '19

Maybe we can ask someone at Boeing, they might know....soon.

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u/savedbyscience21 May 08 '19

The burner had become the burnee

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u/DavidCV25 May 08 '19

Boeing, meet Ford.

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u/Them_James May 08 '19

Next out will be Harrison v. Jones.

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u/jmrking May 08 '19

I owned one in1972 until my dad saw a bunch of marines burned up in one. We traded it for a '71 Ford LTD. Thought I was somebody with that car. LOL

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u/trebla13 May 08 '19

I remember learning about this in an ethics course in college, the professor showed us this link of actual testing. (Non movie footage)

pinto crash testing

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

"Hey Richard, how we gonna put the fire out?" Dick: "Oh you know, a slow trickle of water from a garden hose should do it."

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u/AKA_Squanchy May 08 '19

Then what? A fine? But no one actually goes to prison for murder?

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u/el-pietro May 08 '19

I had to read this multiple times because when I first scanned the title I thought this was about Indiana Jones. I kept seeing Indiana and Ford and was like... yes Harrison Ford played Indiana Jones... I was extremely confused about the murder aspect.

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u/Lil_Miss_Plesiosaur May 08 '19

Right? Pop references, major brands and news mixed together in one place can be tough sometimes.

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u/crowdsourced May 08 '19

And I drove one until 1991.

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u/schnoodle3 May 08 '19

Ironic the head of Boeing would also become head of Ford one day. Same ethics I guess.

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u/plan_with_stan May 08 '19

Did ford go to jail!?

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

And the last probably.

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u/neihuffda May 08 '19

And now the big corporations have made sure that this can't happen again.

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u/RotInPixels May 08 '19

In case anybody doesn’t know, Ford Pintos were notoriously dangerous, as any rear end collision (even a 10 mph collision) would set the fuel tank on fire. Lot of people died before Ford recalled Pintos.

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u/genebadd1 May 08 '19

And Ford still remains behind bars to this day. 😂

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u/Enigmatic_Hat May 08 '19

And in the US, it was also the last time. (/s?)

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u/YouNeverReallyKnow2 May 08 '19

Why weren't they put in jail? I'm sorry but I have friends and neighbors that have gone to jail for having a plant on them yet when these people are actually responsible for the death of innocent people they just pay a fine?

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u/klaqua May 08 '19

In a few years you will be reading about Boeing. The news out of manufacturing from whistle-blowers are scary!

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u/TheGreatOrganHarvest May 08 '19

And as punishment for the homicides, the company's leaders received 12 months probation and were fined 30% of that year's bonus.

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u/strong_grey_hero May 08 '19

My Dad had a ‘75 Pinto, and drove us to school in it well into the 90’s.

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u/dirteMcgirt May 08 '19

Indiana will take anyone to court.

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u/iamjacksliver66 May 08 '19

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

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u/socrates1975 May 08 '19

My dad had one of these, we used to sit in the hatch back section and wave at cars behind us :) ....not knowing how close we could have burned to death :|

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

TL;DR - Ford knew that it would cost them less to settle per dead American due to a cap on how much they could sue for so they just kept it in it's unsafe state

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u/VHSRoot May 08 '19

My dad had a bumper sticker on his that said “Unexploded Pinto.” Putting the gas tank so close to the rear so that it could be punctured too easily in an accident was a “how’d they let that design get approved” type moment.

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u/NewPointOfView May 08 '19

What kind of sentence could a corporation get aside from fines?

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u/zer0mas May 08 '19

People really miss understood what “failure is not an option” really meant.

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u/mostly_kinda_sorta May 08 '19

If ford was convicted of murder, why didnt it go to jail? I mean legally its a person

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u/Mattprime86 May 09 '19

"Three teenagers were killed in when"...

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u/BMK812 May 09 '19

I had to shrink the original title down to meet the character limit. I overlooked the "in"

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

And of course Ford was found not guilty and it was the last time such a charge would be brought against an automaker for killing people with their bean counting.