Nowadays as more and more people are driving, car safety has become more and more important. Airbags, which pop out and are meant to protect drivers during accidents can actually cause injuries and even death. In a Florida court, the testimony showed that Takata, a company that makes airbags, altered its test data to hide its airbag failures from its biggest customer, Honda. Additionally, Takata’s own engineers discarded evidence from up to 16 years ago that may have shown the failure experiment airbags. There has been reports that Takata’s airbag inflators have been linked to 10 deaths, and over 100 injuries. There was a woman from Florida who was paralyzed after her Takata airbag deployed too forcefully during her accident (New York Times).
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The first dilemma can be really tough to choose when the company finds out the data for experiment failure. If the company reports the bad data, there is a chance that the public may find out which harms the reputation and causes the loss of profits; however, if the company withholds this information and pretends nothing happened, it puts its customers in danger and threatens the public safety, which is unethical. The other dilemma is whether or not to compensate the woman who got hurt by Takata’s product. On the one hand, it is ethical to help and compensate the woman since the accident is relevant to the company’s products, but compensating the woman may mislead the public that the company is responsible for the accident, which harms the reputation of business. On the other hand, the woman was paralyzed by the airbags meant to protect her instead of hurting her. Thus the company may receive a bad reputation as well if the company refuses to help this …show more content…
Scarpello states that two key statements are commonly associated with it: “Never treat another inappropriately as a means to an ends,” and “Would you get what you want if everyone did it, under similar circumstances?” Just like in the two dilemmas of Takata, the company needs to consider if people want to know the real test data as a costumer and if the woman should be compensated from the prospective of the woman and the general public. People obviously do want to know the true data of the airbags since the airbags are important during accidents, and defective airbags seriously threatens all customer’s safety.
In conclusion, the stakeholders affected are customers, car manufacturers, such as Honda, employees, investors, and the government in this Tabata’s airbag safety situation. The ethical dilemma for the company is what to choose between lost revenue and people getting hurt, and whether or not to take some responsibility for the injury of the woman from Florida and compensate her even though that model the woman used was never reported for an accident before. Takata should consider utilitarianism and universalism to make an ethical
The first dilemma can be really tough to choose when the company finds out the data for experiment failure. If the company reports the bad data, there is a chance that the public may find out which harms the reputation and causes the loss of profits; however, if the company withholds this information and pretends nothing happened, it puts its customers in danger and threatens the public safety, which is unethical. The other dilemma is whether or not to compensate the woman who got hurt by Takata’s product. On the one hand, it is ethical to help and compensate the woman since the accident is relevant to the company’s products, but compensating the woman may mislead the public that the company is responsible for the accident, which harms the reputation of business. On the other hand, the woman was paralyzed by the airbags meant to protect her instead of hurting her. Thus the company may receive a bad reputation as well if the company refuses to help this …show more content…
Scarpello states that two key statements are commonly associated with it: “Never treat another inappropriately as a means to an ends,” and “Would you get what you want if everyone did it, under similar circumstances?” Just like in the two dilemmas of Takata, the company needs to consider if people want to know the real test data as a costumer and if the woman should be compensated from the prospective of the woman and the general public. People obviously do want to know the true data of the airbags since the airbags are important during accidents, and defective airbags seriously threatens all customer’s safety.
In conclusion, the stakeholders affected are customers, car manufacturers, such as Honda, employees, investors, and the government in this Tabata’s airbag safety situation. The ethical dilemma for the company is what to choose between lost revenue and people getting hurt, and whether or not to take some responsibility for the injury of the woman from Florida and compensate her even though that model the woman used was never reported for an accident before. Takata should consider utilitarianism and universalism to make an ethical