background information
background information
In 1970 Ford Motor Company launched a brand new automobile: the Ford Pinto. Although the Pinto was initially hugely popular in USA, its sales fell dramatically due to a controversy surrounding the safety of its gas tank. The problem with the gas tank was that it could easily be damaged in rear-end collision accidents, resulting in deadly fires and explosions. I will assess this case with the Utilitarian approach, and show a major shortcoming of this approach.
On the one hand, we have to consider the serious harm done to the drivers of the Pinto cars involved in rear-end collision car accidents: the fires and explosions resulting from the flawed gas tanks will cause severe burns and will be lethal to the victims. Ford estimated that the number of such cases would be rather small, and that the damage was approximately $200,725 per human life as compensation for the victim’s pain and suffering, and that the overall cost would be approximately $49.5 million.
On the other hand, we have the damage done to Ford Motor Company if it did redesign the car, and fix the flaw. In this case the costs were estimated to be $11 per gas tank, leading to a total cost of around $137.5 million. This figure could be interpreted as the damage done to Ford, and consequently as the damage done to Ford’s stakeholders: its stockholders might get less return on their shares, the employees might get a somewhat lower raise that year, etc.
When looking at the case from a utilitarian perspective, the solution is crystal clear: as the costs of redesigning ($137.5 million) exceed the costs of selling the car as it is ($49.5 million), Ford should choose for the latter option.
In my opinion the application of the Utilitarian perspective to this specific case clearly shows us one of its major flaws. When rationally calculating the benefit versus the costs of a certain decision, the horrendous suffering and death of a few may be outweighed by a minor increase in ‘utility’ (i.e. happiness) of many. In my opinion, this is a serious flaw of the utilitarian approach, and one which – again, in my opinion - completely discredits it as a practical way of dealing with moral hard cases.
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1 comment:
This whole approach of calculating how much leaving the flaw would cost versus fixing it cost is a little mistake. First of all, they calculated lives in terms of money, which is not really moral in my opinion. Moreover, even thinking of long-term business perspective I think that maybe at the beginning after fixing the tanks, the stockholders’ return would go down, and Ford would need to spend almost triple as much for fixing the problem than leaving it out, but in the end their value would grow and they would become a trustworthy company which for sure eventually would lead to higher stockholders’ returns and would pay off.
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