(1) the ford pinto was statistically no more dangerous than other cars.
(2) if the co. knew about the deaths that would ensue but deemed them justifiable because it would not be above the norm, then perhaps one might question the safety standards themselves, which make people complacent when they could get more money on the market for improving safety and not just meeting a certain minimum.
According to his study, the number who died in Pinto rear-impact fires was well below the hundreds cited in contemporary news reports and closer to the 27 recorded by a limited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database. Given the Pinto’s production figures (over 2 million built), this was not substantially worse than typical for the time. Schwartz said that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, that its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles…
Schwartz’s study said:
The Pinto’s fuel tank location behind the axle, ostensibly its design defect, was “commonplace at the time in American cars” (p. 1027).
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 (p. 1037).
You’re clearly too timid to say it. Ok, I’ll say it for you: the federal government would do a much better job making cars for us (or at least, fascistly regulating them) because:
the car industry is totally different from all other consumer products because it involves human safety
the free-market fails because companies are just motivated by profit, and we all know that profit is evil
consumers are too stupid or ignorant to be able to weigh the benefit versus cost of cars
Is there such a thing as involuntary acceptance? To me it seems like an oxymoron per se. Yet it is mentioned in mainstream economics and law to describe “disparity in bargaining power”. I suppose this ties back into the idea that there can exist no true monopoly in a free market. But what about a man who needs a medical procedure that is can only be performed by one surgeon? Do you think there exists a so-called disparity in bargaining power?
I think you have your years a bit off. The Yamaha engine and gear box of which you write was in the V6 Taurus SHO, introduced in 1999. Ford’s turn around had already happened years before, in a small way with the new look of the 1983 Thunderbird, and fully with the introduction of the Taurus for the 1986 model year. By 1989, Ford had two of the top three selling cars in the US (Taurus and Escort), and two of the top three selling trucks in the US (F-Series and Ranger, the former the world’s best selling vehicle at the time), and was rapidly gaining on GM as the largest auto manufacturer in the world.
The Yamaha-powered SHO was a novelty. In the eleven years the SHO was produced, Yamaha-powered for the first seven of them, just over 106,000 were sold. By 1999, on the other hand, total Taurus sales were over two million.