Originally Posted By: CKN
Originally Posted By: Nickdfresh
The Pinto thing is largely debunked. They were no more likely to explode than any other similar class of compact cars, including Hondas and Toyotas...
Yea-that's why they recalled 12.5 million of them.
https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-meti...the-ford-pinto/
They "voluntarily recalled" them because of bad press and hysteria. At the same time the NHTSA said there wasn't enough evidence to "warrant an investigation. The Pintos were no more dangerous than any other small car, and actually less dangerous than many:
Quote:
Subsequent analysis[edit]
The recall was included in Time magazine's 2009 top ten product recalls, Popular Mechanics magazine's 2010 five most notorious recalls of all time, and NBC News' 2013 twelve famous recalls.[124][125][126] Time said "The Ford Pinto was a famously bad automobile, but worse still might be Ford's handling of the safety concerns."[125] According to the Los Angeles Times in 2010, the award "signaled to the auto industry that it would be harshly sanctioned for ignoring known defects."[107]
Schwartz 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.[6] When considering the overall safety of the Pinto Schwartz notes that subcompact cars as a class have 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.[127] 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.[6] 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 is the car 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.[128]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Subsequent_analysis
