Pinto Madness Summary

In Pinto Madness, Mark Dowie, an award- winning journalist/author, argues that in the 1970’s corporate greed influenced the way automobile manufacturing mishandled safety regulations in order to increase profit instead of protecting human lives (148). He supports his claim by first explaining the significance of the Ford Pinto to the situation. The Ford Pinto was entirely “designed in about two years”, the car was “rushed into production” with the schedule for production “set at just under 25” months (142). During testing periods, it was discovered that any impact to the rear-end of the Pinto at a speed over 30 miles per hour would result in a severed fuel tank, which is what led to an immense amount of burn deaths and injuries. Only 3 alternative models …show more content…
One engineer told him how “the priority is styling, not safety” (143). Another engineer discussed how the importance isn’t about safety, what the car really needs is that extra trunk space to fit another set of golf clubs, not a safe secure gas tank. Ford had no regard for the quality of car they were putting on the market, according to Iacocca, president of Ford, “Safety doesn’t sell” (143). Dowie concludes with the process Ford made to delay any legal regulation on their vehicle. By placing a value of “$200,000” on a human life they were able to use cost-benefit analysis to reason why they didn’t need to make any improvements on the vehicle for over eight years (147). They avoided NHTSA government safety standards, such as standard 301 (which was to provide passengers protection in the case of a vehicle fire after a crash), by strategizing ways to object to the regulations. They would change the subject from the Ford being the cause of the burn accidents to the people themselves being the problem. Each argument they made resulted in months/years of testing by the