1. Ford Pinto and utilitarian ethics

2. What are the essential features of utilitarianism?
Consequentialist
Maximise pleasure (Bentham) or happiness (Mill)
Calculate empirically balance of pleasure over pain or happiness over misery
Tends to ignore individual rights, classic criticism – minority is sacrificed for majority
Does Mill’s rule utilitarianism get round this problem?

3. Aims of this lesson Revise utilitarian ethics
Link it to cost-benefit analysis used by businesses
Consider the case of the Ford Pinto (1972)
Evaluate whether utilitarian ethics is to blame – does the criticism hold good?

4. We start by viewing a Youtube clip on the Ford Pinto
We start by viewing a Youtube clip on the Ford Pinto. What are three key facts you can find? View actively!

5. Style over safety?
Because of styling and cost constraints, locating the gas tank over the axle, which was known to prevent fire in rear-end crashes, was undesirable. The Pinto had to sell for $2,000.
The axle arrangement, in concert with styling constraints, resulted in a small luggage compartment that would be limited in carrying long objects such as golf clubs.
To increase the size of the luggage compartment, the gas tank was relocated to the car’s rear (Strobel, 1994)

6. This fault meant that Ford’s own test result = explosion in 8/11 tests

7. Some cost /benefit facts
The piece of plastic cost $11 a car to fit
Estimated cost of fitting $137m
Estimated cost of casualties $48m in compensation
But ….. a problem with utilitarian ethics is we cannot know precisely what the consequences will be….
Actual compensation cost was millions, and in a recall took place anyway.

8. Reputation and ethical outcomes
500 burn fatalities in crashes (Dowie, 1977). Two million Pintos were sold.
In September 1978, Ford issued a recall for 1.5 million , making it the largest recall in the industry up to that time.
One result was the largest personal injury judgment ever ($6.6m awarded).
In the 1979 landmark case State of Indiana v. Ford Motor Co., Ford notoriously became the first American corporation ever prosecuted on criminal homicide charges. Ford was found not guilty in March 1980 (Schwartz, 1991).

9. Evaluate
Is cost/benefit analysis to blame – or poor cost/benefit analysis based on Government figures ($200,000 per human life)?
Is utilitarian ethics to blame? Or a failure to do a proper analysis of likely consequences based on known facts – that in two-thirds of rear end crash tests the tank exploded?

10. Write down.. One element you’ve revised about utilitarian ethics
One problem that emerges when applying utilitarian ethics
One fact about the Pinto case
One sentence you could use in an essay on business ethics

11. http://stevenclark. com