Engineering Ethics: The Ford Pinto Exploding Fuel Tank

Course overview

The Ford Pinto scandal is now part of the lore of American culture. The Pinto was a subcompact car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company for the model years 1971 to 1980. During the 1970s there were many documented cases of Ford Pintos bursting into flames as a result of rear end collisions. The Pinto case burst into the national consciousness after Mother Jones magazine published an investigatory piece by journalist Mark Dowie titled "Pinto Madness" in 1977. The article referred to the Pinto as a "firetrap" and "death trap" and castigated Ford for "placing a dollar value on human life." The company took a beating when it was revealed in the media that Ford knew about deficiencies in the fuel tank system, but proceeded with the design anyway based on the results of a cost benefit analysis included in what is now referred to as The Pinto Memo. The conventional wisdom is that Ford showed callous disregard for safety and reduced human life to a dollar value in its prioritization of profits over consumer safety and ethics. However, the case against the Pinto was not so clear cut. The $200,000 life valuation figure used by Ford in its cost-benefit analysis was actually provided to Ford and other automakers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Pinto Memo wasn't used or consulted internally by Ford, but rather was attached to a letter written to NHTSA about proposed regulation. The Pinto's fuel tank location behind the axle, ostensibly its design defect, was commonplace at the time in American cars. The precedent of the California Supreme Court at the time not only tolerated manufacturers trading off safety for cost, but apparently encouraged manufacturers to consider such trade offs. 27 deaths were attributed to Pinto fires (the same number of deaths attributed to a Pinto transmission problem) out of 3 million vehicles sold. The car was no more fire prone than other cars of the time and its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles In light of the above, do you think history should look more kindly on the Ford engineers that worked on the Pinto project?