What is the significance of this article?
This article is basically highlighting the “corporate malpractice” in the auto industry and take’s Ford’s “Pinto” as an isolated case in the started, giving a detailed statistical detail of the death’s and disfiguration caused by the Pinto’s fuel tank rupturing and causing a fire in the accidents. And how the magazine Mother Jones criticizes the Ford’s company for putting benefits above than the safety measure of the car. This article states the debate between the magazine and the Ford’s defense on how it did or did not meet all the necessary measurements to make this car safe. This article take’s one such example; Ford’s Pinto to signify the morality, social responsibility and ethics in companies.
What is our social responsibility as companies and engineers?
According to this article, they highlight how Mark Dowie from the Magazine Mother Jones questions the company’s inability to meet the 20mph impact requirement and states by acquiring original documents from the Ford’s that only $11 dollars per car was only needed to bring minor adjustments to improve the “crash-worthiness”. And states that the Ford’s company could have even given the consumer’s the right to choose this facility. In this article we can see that only minor changes could be made by the engineers and the company itself but rather realizing it’s safety they chose benefit instead. And this question’s the company’s ethics and the social responsibility of providing that “safety” instead of just a car. This article also mainly highlights how Ford’s engineering and the company itself didn’t prioritize the cost value of a human life above the benefits, prioritizing human life should be our social responsibility as companies and engineers.
Was the cost of the accidents the only cost?".
The cost of the accidents was broken down in the cost-benefit analysis. In this article the pieces of article mentioned how Mother jones criticizes that how does $10,000 justify the cost of a life and disfiguration in “the victim’s pain and suffering” when it breaks down the cost and benefit analysis. It costed the company $200,000 per person $67,000 per injury and $700 per vehicle causing of about 2100 burned vehicles and 180 burn deaths and 180 burned victims, and the company benefitted about $49.5 million which says that the benefits was more to Ford’s company rather than producing the safer version of the car earlier, which they did after several years but took them a lot longer than it should’ve.