Quote:
Originally Posted by anglo
Ford released the Pinto knowing its flaws and reached the conclusion it'd still be cheaper to settle lawsuits than fix the issue!
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The Pinto was actually found to be as safe as the average car of that era and was actually safer than the Toyota Corrola and other subcompacts of the era. I had four Pintos early in my driving career. Crashed two of them, one really hard. Neither blew up.
To wit:
Retrospective safety analysis
UCLA law professor Gary T. Schwartz, in a Rutgers Law Review article (see Section 7.3 NHTSA Investigation above), studied the fatality rates of the Pinto and several other small cars of the time period. He noted that fires, and rear-end fires in particular, are very small portion of overall auto fatalities. At the time only 1% of automobile crashes would result in fire and only 4% of fatal accidents involved fire, and only 15% of fatal fire crashes are the result of rear-end collisions.[139] When considering the overall safety of the Pinto, Schwartz notes that subcompact cars as a class have a generally higher fatality risk. Pintos represented 1.9% of all cars on the road in the 1975–76 period. During that time the car represented 1.9% of all "fatal accidents accompanied by some fire."
Implying the car was average for all cars and slightly above average for its class.[140] When all types of fatalities are considered, the Pinto was approximately even with the AMC Gremlin, Chevrolet Vega, and Datsun 510. It was significantly better than the Datsun 1200/210, Toyota Corolla and VW Beetle.[139] The safety record of the car in terms of fire was average or slightly below average for compacts, and all cars respectively. This was considered respectable for a subcompact car. Only when considering the narrow subset of rear-impact, fire fatalities for the car were somewhat worse than the average for subcompact cars. While acknowledging this is an important legal point, Schwartz rejects the portrayal of the car as a firetrap.[141]
"Don't let facts get in the way of a good story"...