Frank Early's List: Ethics

• Most people found it reprehensible that Ford determined that the $11 cost per automobile was too high and opted not to make the production change to the Pinto model.
• Most people found it reprehensible that Ford determined that the $11 cost per automobile was too high and opted not to make the production change to the Pinto model
• Most people found it reprehensible that Ford determined that the $11 cost per automobile was too high and opted not to make the production change to the Pinto model
• Most people found it reprehensible that Ford determined that the $11 cost per automobile was too high and opted not to make the production change to the Pinto model
• Most people found it reprehensible that Ford determined that the $11 cost per automobile was too high and opted not to make the production change to the Pinto model
• Most people found it reprehensible that Ford determined that the $11 cost per automobile was too high and opted not to make the production change to the Pinto model

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• The safety record of the Ford Pinto has become a landmark narrative on the evils of amoral companies putting profit ahead of customer safety. The articles and news stories about the Pinto released at the time generally portray the car as more prone to fire than other cars of the time. They also portray Ford as callous for knowingly and willfully ignoring safety concerns. More recent retrospective analysis of the car, the reports, the NHTSA and Ford's internal actions suggest the common knowledge understanding and reporting of the events is mistaken
• Ford allegedly was aware of this design flaw but refused to pay what was characterized as the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. Mother Jones magazine obtained the cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 ($56 today, allowing for inflation) repair against the monetary value of a human life, in what became known as the Ford Pinto memo.
• The characterization of Ford's design decision as gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to significant lawsuits. While Ford was acquitted of criminal charges, it lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue that seats four."^[

  • The Barbaque that seat 4
• The 27 deaths attributed to Pinto fires is the same number of deaths attributed to a transmission problem in the Pinto. That same transmission problem resulted in 180 total deaths in Ford vehicles

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• Fighting strong competition from Volkswagen for the lucrative small-car market, the Ford Motor Company rushed the Pinto into production in much less than the usual time.
• Ford engineers discovered in pre-production crash tests that rear-end collisions would rupture the Pinto's fuel system extremely easily.
• Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway—exploding gas tank and all—even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank.
• Ford waited eight years because its internal "cost-benefit analysis," which places a dollar value on human life, said it wasn't profitable to make the changes sooner.
• Mother Jones has studied hundreds of reports and documents on rear-end collisions involving Pintos. These reports conclusively reveal that if you ran into that Pinto you were following at over 30 miles per hour, the rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion, right up to the back seat. The tube leading to the gas-tank cap would be ripped away from the tank itself, and gas would immediately begin sloshing onto the road around the car. The buckled gas tank would be jammed up against the differential housing (that big bulge in the middle of your rear axle), which contains four sharp, protruding bolts likely to gash holes in the tank and spill still more gas. Now all you need is a spark from a cigarette, ignition, or scraping metal, and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If you gave that Pinto a really good whack—say, at 40 mph—chances are excellent that its doors would jam and you would have to stand by and watch its trapped passengers burn to death.
• This scenario is no news to Ford. Internal company documents in our possession show that Ford has crash-tested the Pinto at a top-secret site more than 40 times and that every test made at over 25 mph without special structural alteration of the car has resulted in a ruptured fuel tank. Despite this, Ford officials denied under oath having crash-tested the Pinto.
• Eleven of these tests, averaging a 31-mph impact speed, came before Pintos started rolling out of the factories.
• Iacocca argued forcefully that Volkswagen and the Japanese were going to capture the entire American subcompact market unless Ford put out its own alternative to the VW Beetle
• Lee Iococca wanted that little car in the showrooms of America with the 1971 models. So he ordered his engineering vice president, Bob Alexander, to oversee what was probably the shortest production planning period in modern automotive history. The normal time span from conception to production of a new car model is about 43 months. The Pinto schedule was set at just under 25.
• When it was discovered the gas tank was unsafe, did anyone go to Iacocca and tell him? "Hell no," replied an engineer who worked on the Pinto, a high company official for many years, who, unlike several others at Ford, maintains a necessarily clandestine concern for safety. "That person would have been fired. Safety wasn't a popular subject around Ford in those days. With Lee it was taboo. Whenever a problem was raised that meant a delay on the Pinto, Lee would chomp on his cigar, look out the window and say 'Read the product objectives and get back to work.'"

  • Safety wasn't a popular subject around Ford in those days

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• • Nearly 1 million children living in the United States have lead levels in their blood that are high enough to cause irreversible damage to their health.
   
  • According to recent CDC estimates, about 890,000 children (ages 1-5) living in the United States have elevated blood lead levels.
   
  • The primary sources of lead exposure for most children are deteriorating lead-based paint, lead contaminated dust, and lead contaminated residential soil.
   
  • Lead poisoning is an environmental and public health hazard of global proportions. Children and adults in virtually every region of the world are being exposed to unsafe levels of lead in the environment, the home, the community, and the workplace.

  • dangers of lead for children
• Lead is most hazardous to young children, whose developing brains and nervous systems are particularly vulnerable to lead. Low levels of exposure in children can produce permanent nervous system damage, including reduction in intelligence and attention span, reading and learning disabilities, and behavioral problems. Very high levels of lead exposure can cause mental retardation, coma, convulsions, and death.

  • damage to developing brain and nervous system

• BEIJING (AP)-- Medical tests have shown at least 121 children living near a battery plant in eastern China are suffering from lead poisoning, the latest in a recent string of such cases that have affected hundreds.

    

  Two medical agencies tested 287 children younger than 14 years of age for lead poisoning and found 121 of them had excessive levels of lead in their blood, the government of Shanghang county in Fujian province said in a statement late Saturday. An investigation was ongoing, it said.

  • more lead poinsoning of China's youth

• Local officials say eight factories in Wenping and Simachong, including the plant in Hengjiang, have since been shut down, including coal, manganese and iron smelting plants.

  • China shuts down plants due to lead poisoning in local villages

• Lead has been recognized as a poison for millennia and has been the focus of public health regulation in much of the developed world for the better part of the past century. The nature of regulation has evolved in response to increasing information provided by vigorous scientific investigation of lead’s effects. In recognition of the particular sensitivity of the developing brain to lead’s pernicious effects, much of this legislation has been addressed to the prevention of childhood lead poisoning.

  • regulations and history
• the accumulating data suggesting that there are toxicological effects with behavioural concomitants at exceedingly low levels of exposure. In addition, there is also evidence that certain genetic and environmental factors can increase the detrimental effects of lead on neural development, thereby rendering certain children more vulnerable to lead neurotoxicity.

  • neurotoxicity

• The deaths reflect that workplace safety is a relatively low priority for China’s government, which puts heavy emphasis on raising production and forbids workers from forming independent unions.

  • emphasis on production instead of safety

• The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 was passed by the U.S. Congress last year in response to widespread product recalls of items felt to pose a danger to children. These recalled items included Chinese toys contaminated with lead or lead-based paint. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 also reauthorized and modernized the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

  • consumer product safety improvement act in brief

• • China deflects issue back to Mattel