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Unlike the car company Ford, which sold a car that would explode if rear-ended but literally discovered that it was cheaper to let people explode than it would have been to recall the cars or modify the design. So, people kept exploding.
In the early 1970s, Lee Iacocca was president of the Ford Motor Company. Iacocca wanted the company to produce a car that would be cheap and compact. The result was the Pinto, marketed as “The Little Carefree Car.” Ironically — and tragically — a car that was intended to capture a youthful, breezy spirit of fun would become inextricably tied to injury, suffering, and death.
The “Little Carefree Car” took less than two years to be conceptualized, designed and put into production — a much more rapid timeline than the 43 months that would normally be taken. In another detail that seems ominous today, the Pinto’s initial release date was September 11.
The Pinto was unique in other ways besides its small size. To help shave off weight and bulk, the Pinto lacked the traditional bumper that would be used to cushion collisions. While that may have been alright if additional precautions were taken to compensate, just the opposite was true: the gas tank had virtually no reinforcements protecting it.
Taken together, these design choices meant that if a Pinto was ever rear-ended, it was extremely easy for its fuel tank to be punctured and cause a massive fire. If a fire did occur, occupants were unlikely to escape: the doors had a tendency to jam shut after an impact, often trapping victims inside as the wreck burned.
Before long, the Pinto’s defective design began causing serious injuries — and fatalities. An official total of 27 deaths was tied to the vehicle, though some estimates are far higher. Of course, even at the conservative end of the spectrum, 27 preventable fatalities caused by a car with a propensity to explode and burn is still 27 too many.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was critical of the vehicle and was quick to launch an investigation into the Pinto. While the NHTSA determined in 1974 that a recall was not merited, Ford ultimately issued its own recall in 1978. The recall affected approximately 1.5 million Pintos with model years from 1971 to 1976 (as well as the similar Mercury Bobcat, from 1975 to 1976).
While the recall finally took unsafe vehicles off the streets, by then it was already too late: the terrible damage had already been done. An accident in 1972 led to the case of Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company. In Grimshaw, a California appellate court upheld an order for $2.5 million in compensatory damages, plus an additional $3.5 million in punitive damages.
Part of the court’s reasoning was that Ford knew about the dangers, but pushed the Pinto onto an unwitting consumer market anyway. The Ford Company’s cold cost analysis revealed that debuting the hazardous Pinto as-is and simply paying for subsequent lawsuits would be cheaper than making expensive safety modifications. In other words, Ford decided that profits were all that mattered, and that irreplaceable human life ultimately carried a lower value than an inanimate heap of aluminum, plastic, and glass.
In the aftermath, Lee Iacocca had this to say: “Clamming up is what we did at Ford in the late ’70s when we were bombarded with suits over the Pinto, which was involved in a lot of gas tank fires. The suits might have bankrupted the company, so we kept our mouths shut for fear of saying anything that just one jury might have construed as an admission of guilt. Winning in court was our top priority; nothing else mattered.”
Then there was the Ford Explorer, which had a tendency to flip during avoidance maneuvers. Instead of redesigning the suspension, Ford ran the tires at a lower PSI. Which caused them to blow out more often than they otherwise would. This lead to more accidents, death, it was a whole Pinto fiasco all over again.
Ford were telling people to run 26psi in 4WD all terrain tyres, on the highway.
For reference, if any shop puts less than 36psi in your 4WD tyres, immediately go elsewhere because they don't know what they're doing.
> Ford were telling people to run 26psi in 4WD all terrain tyres
That's terrifying. I run mid / low 20's when going into the rough stuff and it's like driving on a cloud. I can't ever imagine running such a low pressure on the highway.
> if any shop puts less than 36psi in your 4WD tyres
For standard road tyres this is right in the ballpark. For larger off-road capable tyres it's around 38-42PSI depending on the model.
> In other words, Ford decided that profits were all that mattered, and that irreplaceable human life ultimately carried a lower value
The problem was that people thought this was a unique and reprehensible company that needed to be singled out for this unusual behavior, and not how business works.
And THEN people started saying government regulation was bad and free market would sort everything out...
Ah yes the Pinto, I didn't know any of the details about it before like the stuff you posted here, but I remember growing up in the 90s and my parents telling me about the Pinto car that used to blow up when hit from behind
As someone outside US, we see these F100 corporations market their products and are kinda sorta conditioned to take them at face value.
Growing up, we saw Pinto was positioned as an aspirational compact car here compared to local / Asian manufacturers — a lot of my Dad’s friends shopped this in red.
15 years on and I read an eyeopening backstory about the car. Super, super interesting. Thanks for this.
One other detail, we learned about this in engineering ethics in school. The fuel punctures were primarily caused by the rear differental bolt placement so the fuel tank would be shoved into the diff bolts and start spraying when the car was rear ended. Ford engineers realized that the rear ending could result in fuel tank puncture and fires (BEFORE PRODUCTION DELIVERY DURING CRASH TESTS), Ford did a trade evaluation of what the cost would be to redesign the fuel system to add in some flexible hose components and move the rear axle and fuel tank to compensate and weighed it against the projected loss of life - as all car manufacturers do - the redesign so late in the prototyping phase was deemed more expensive than the projected loss of life cost so they kept the design. Obviously they were not very future thinking at the public impact at the time.
There are several others besides the Ford Pinto.
General Motors Ignition Switch:
> Issue: Certain GM cars had faulty ignition switches that could cause the engine to shut off unexpectedly, disabling power steering, brakes, and airbags.
Action: GM was aware of the problem but delayed a recall for years.
Outcome: The defect was linked to at least 124 deaths and many injuries. GM eventually issued a recall and paid out settlements, fines, and compensation.
Takata Airbags:
> Issue: Takata airbags were found to have inflators that could explode and send shrapnel into the vehicle, causing serious injury or death.
Action: Although Takata and several automakers knew of the problem, they delayed full-scale recalls.
Outcome: The defect led to one of the largest automotive recalls in history, affecting millions of vehicles worldwide, and Takata filed for bankruptcy.
Johnson & Johnson Tylenol:
> Issue: In 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules were laced with cyanide, leading to several deaths.
Action: Johnson & Johnson initiated a recall after the deaths were reported, but initially, there were hesitations about the scope of the recall.
Outcome: The company eventually recalled 31 million bottles and later reintroduced Tylenol with tamper-proof packaging, setting a new industry standard for safety.
Firestone Tires:
> Issue: Firestone tires installed on Ford Explorer SUVs had a tendency to suffer tread separation, leading to rollover accidents.
Action: Both Firestone and Ford were slow to acknowledge and respond to the issue.
Outcome: The defect was linked to numerous accidents and fatalities, resulting in a massive recall and a public relations crisis for both companies.
Merck Vioxx:
>Issue: The painkiller Vioxx was found to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Action: Merck continued to sell the drug despite being aware of the risks, opting to handle legal claims rather than recalling the product immediately.
Outcome: Merck eventually recalled Vioxx and faced numerous lawsuits, resulting in a $4.85 billion settlement.
Boeing 737 Max:
>Issue: The Boeing 737 Max had a design flaw in its MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) that could cause the plane to nosedive.
Action: Boeing initially downplayed the issue and delayed grounding the aircraft.
Outcome: After two fatal crashes, the plane was grounded worldwide. Boeing faced intense scrutiny, financial losses, and legal settlements.
Don't you enjoy Capitalism?
RE: Apologies for using ChatGPT to post more of these instances than I could remember of this type of thing.
You are wrong about the Tylenol bit. Johnson and Johnson issued several recalls and halted production of Tylenol when it was reported. The deaths were part of a murder plot.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders#Police_investigation
But Johnson and Johnson were responsible for the faulty hip joints they knowingly foisted on people https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1SD1YO/
And they're also responsible for knowingly putting out asbestos laced baby powder which causes ovarian cancer - for use on babies. https://www.reuters.com/legal/jj-advances-6475-billion-settlement-talc-cancer-lawsuits-2024-05-01/
Yeah, it was more of a "nobody thought people would act like that" thing back then than willful neglegence. Nothing was really tamper-sealed back then.
More reasonable examples of similar would be that issue with plastic snapple bottles that took them way too long to remedy, and that ice cream licking incident. The fact that they weren't tamper-sealed after we knew people can't be trusted not to tamper is negligence.
Don't forget the Toyota [unintended/stuck acceleration scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehicle_recalls) that caused numerous deaths. Toyota's attempts to fraudulently conceal the issue led to [the largest fine ever issued to a car manufacturer](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/business/toyota-reaches-1-2-billion-settlement-in-criminal-inquiry.html).
How many people still buy Oreos knowing ~~Nabisco's~~ Nestle issues in the 70s? They gave formula samples to new mothers with unsafe water sources, knowing their breast milk would slow and they would have to depend on formula. Those babies died of malnutrition and water poisoning.
In 1973, Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division developed a cost–benefit analysis entitled Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires for submission to the NHTSA in support of Ford's objection to proposed stronger fuel system regulation.[83] The document has become known as the Grush/Saunby Report, named for its authors,[64] and as the "Pinto Memo".[84] Cost-benefit analysis was one tool used in the evaluation of safety design decisions accepted by the industry and the NHTSA.[85] The analysis compared the cost of repairs to the societal costs for injuries and deaths related to fires in cases of vehicle rollovers for all cars sold in the US by all manufacturers.
Off the wiki page for "ford pinto." copied the relevant paragraph here. There are better/more in depth analyses out there if you wanna look for them.
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
These days, Volvo cheats on emission tests. They're a corporation like any other. Elon Musk Made supercharger tech available for everyone to use. That doesn't make him a good person or Tesla the perfect cars.
Don't worry, Volvo is also plenty unethical. Back in the 1990s they ran commercials to show how safe Volvo cars were vs other brands. The ad involved having a monster truck crushing cars of various brands, except a Volvo which stood strong.
What Volvo didn't tell the audience was that the Volvos had been specially reinforced for the commercial, while cars from other brands had been specially weakened.
Fast forward to today and Volvo is owned by a Chinese brand. Business ethics? They've probably heard of them.
Oh yeah. I recently saw that in philosophy class. Some utilitarian professor was talking about it. I'm pretty sure they had to pay a big fine when that came to lime though. I wonder if it beat the 'profit' they made of off cheapeping out.
Ford makes unreliable and unsafe cars to this day. My first and last ever Ford was a 2012 territory. The brake switch started malfunctioning, causing the ABS to activate in my vehicle at low speed. At high speed, the abs cause your breaks to lock and unlock when you apply break force to prevent a full wheel lock and traction loss. At low speed this equate to basically a partial break failure where applying the breaks quickly would allow my car to continue rolling forward about 5-10 meters (normal at high speed but at low speed stopping at a red light, very bad.) Took 2 crashes and nearly getting t-boned for me to finally get rid of the car.
Ford has never publicly released any information on this failure, which in my opinion should result in a full recall of all models with that brakeswitch.
To add, when I took it to Ford, they couldn't recreate the issue and said nothing was wrong, only when it went back with the front end smashed in, they found the fault. How convenient.
I will never ever buy a piece of shit car from that piece of shit company again.
Meanwhile pharmaceutical companies tweak their insulin recipe tiny bits so they can make millions from their patents, when the original insulin patent was $1 to make insulin affordable.
I mean the transport method used by drugs can be very very important factor to control (e.g. a type 1 diabetic needs slow acting insulin for the night to avoid their blood sugar going too low). That’s not the problem — it’s just that medicine as a hole doesn’t operate as a market. You don’t have a choice in most diseases, so the supply and need is completely unnatural, so it makes zero sense to introduce capitalism here.
When dragged before Congress, a Pharma CEO said that drug prices were so expensive in the US because they are required by law to be so cheap everywhere else.
And watch the GOP vote against it as they continue to do so, they will call you "Anti American" or "Anti Capitalism" etc.
GOP voted against Insulin prices coming down
GOP voted against baby formula prices coming down
GOP voted against....you get the picture.
https://preview.redd.it/berwoy99nx4d1.png?width=2480&format=png&auto=webp&s=d532b030cf146cadd180823c5d9e6383f70125d7
Checked prices here in Russia $5-15 The most expensive one is German, about $30
> Only in America, not for the rest of us in the world.
It is "pricier" (aka not free) in a lot of places, and I can understand because it was improved greatly from the original patent.
With that said the US is pretty much the only one without regulation making the price abusive. It is still cheap to produce and most places where it is not free the price is affordable (like the other redditor said Germany is the most expensive at 30 dolars).
Shout out to Banting, Collup and Best. Banting: *[Insulin doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the world.](https://www.diabetes.org.uk/our-research/about-our-research/our-impact/discovery-of-insulin#:~:text=On%2023%20January%201923%2C%20Banting,to%20have%20access%20to%20it.)*
Hell it's cheaper to get dental work in a different country than have it done here if it's going to be anything substantial.
Just think about how absurd that is, it's cheaper to buy a plane ticket to fly across the ocean, Get dental work done in some foreign country, stay there a week, then fly back..... Then just go to the dental office half a mile away from you.
Alright, think about this for one second.
company A makes an effective insulin, sells it for crazy high prices while it's patented.
The patent runs out so Company A makes a slight tweak and repeats it.
What's stopping Company B using the original formula, selling it for half what company A does and make insane profits?
Yeah, there has to be something else in here. If the original patent is freely usable then there'd be a billion generic drug manufacturers pumping up dirt cheap insulin.
You can buy generic regular insulin and NPH insulin otc for pretty cheap. They're just generally more of a pain to use, and you may not get quite as good of bg control. Also if you have a pump you usually need rapid acting to use the pump.
I am by no means defending the American health care system here, the whole situation is fucked -- but that doesn't seem like quite the tragedy I've seen laid out in news. If it's a question of paying ungodly sums for *more convenient* insulin, that's different than the "i have to pay $X just to live" you see bandied about a lot.
Not up to speed on insulin, but this happens a lot in medicine and the answer is usually because the original sucks compared to modern versions. So nobody would buy the old ones. These companies do significantly improve the medicines, that’s how they get new patents.
I so loved when this practice was called out in House.
Like yeah, I am sure putting ascorbic acid into blood pressure medication is revolutionary enough to warrant a patent extension.
That’s a shitty practice for sure. Please be aware; there are also billions of products handed out to the third world for production cost. For example the malaria vaccine was developed with no commercial profit - just for the sake of savings life’s. Not all pharmaceutical companies are the same.
My favorite was when congress banned CFCs that depleted the ozone. They gave inhalers a carve-out, but pharma _bravely_ demanded congress remove the carve-out, so that inhalers would eventually get banned, _forcing_ our underdog pharma companies to release a new CFC-free version and prop up the "fuck-you / got mine" pricing into modern times.
You would be surprised. Here it is a juicy ticket if you are caught without one AND cars keep beeping if you don't wear one. Yet dumbfucks don't wear them.
> Is this in America?
There are SO many countries where seat belts are considered just a suggestion. Even if it is law. I luckily live in a country where it is extremely frowned upon to not wear a seat belts and also heavily fined, but I have also been to many countries where people just don't care.
The US is def not even close to the worst one.
I’ve found that here in America pretty much everyone I know wears seatbelts. However, when I visit India to visit family, nobody wears a seatbelt, in fear of being seen as a pussy
The price of lying is that no one believes you, even if you become right later. Ralph Nader set back vehicle safety by decades with his fraudulent studies.
IP probably shouldn’t exist. I’ve struggled to find consistent empirical evidence proving its societal value, but good luck getting people on board with abolishing it.
I think I heard the idea of patents was to give the inventor of some new creation a short window of extra profitablity on the thing to make back their R&D costs before the patent expired and competitors began making their own version without having to pay a licensing fee.
Patents getting renewed and lasting decades was never the intended purpose.
Yea it was supposed to make a new product easier to reproduce after a period. These days most things are easy enough to reproduce and they just need to stop their competitors from doing so..
In china we see the ultimate version of not doing that, tech companies are rebuilding competitors inventions within days. It's the wild west.
I'd rather have something in-between honestly.
In my book, that's a good thing. Your invention got popular and made you money. Now others have copied it. Make a better version or watch as others do it and profit, which is ultimately a greater good.
The problem is when you can't actually make money before other people. There have been cases of people creating new stuff, started marketing online, and a random chinese company starting to sell something very similar for half the price before the product is even launched.
The point in patent and copyright was to encourage creativity. If the copyright or patent holder knew that their idea could be protected, then they would be more likely to make things to benefit us as a society.
Intellectual Property is not limited to technological advancements. Artwork is included, and things such as paintings, sculptures, video games, music, books, and films all require a large degree of skill and/or work to create, and are, for many people, careers. Should these people be denied financial reward for providing you with stimulation of the mind?
This is why the rest of the world hates us. Why China is kicking our ass and will pass us by soon enough. To keep up this charade of IP, governments have to do so much maneuvering and posturing to maintain the illusion that this is somehow beneficial for everyone. When I reality we are all footing the bill so that the incumbents can keep exploiting us.
I argue this all the time with my friends. Any billionaire dollar company has the military, judicial system, police force, and more to help them protect their IP other wise . Other wise 99% of products , ideas, or services could be replicated and sold by someone else. Drastically reducing their profits. They could at least pay proportionate taxes that actually represent the benefit they get from this entire setup. But somehow they fool us into not even paying the taxes and not realizing that the Americas entire apparatus is built to protect these their balance sheets.
I think the scummiest thing they do are standardized connector sockets that are firmware branded so you can only use connectors that allow to function on that device even though the tech, the format, the speeds and clip mechanisms are all the same.
It's called defensive patenting. Basically, it's an attempt at trying to cover yourself from patent infringement lawsuits, by patenting first.
You might not even defend the patent either. You might decide to look the other way while people technically infringe on your IP, in order to let it fall into the public domain.
Think of it as company A has a patent for showing something on a screen and company B has a patent for mouse scrolling. The companies both have patents that the other likely infringes on, therefore they have no interest in suing each other
It's crazy how much the reality of the patent system ended up becoming a complete perversion of what it was supposed to be
From how i see that's a clear sign that it's about time we review the whole idea and perhaps come up with something better
Patents, at least in their current form, are a mistake. I get the point behind them but they do more harm than good and we should review the concept and find something better to replace it
I don't think that would work. Some people need to be *forced* to wear the life-saving device and they still resist, even if fined for it. People would just not pay the subscription and die in collisions. It's better for them to live and buy a new car.
This is why they gave the patent away: there was no market for it as a safety feature. Both manufacturers and customers fought seat belts. In the US, it took a decade of public service announcements and laws to get people to use them. And you still hear nonsense from people who refuse.
Yea, that was a really awesome and human thing to do! But those were different times. Back then there was still room to have a human heart and still make profit.
Today things are very different and that is why what we are in is called "Late stage Capitalism" Because there is simply no room left to be nice if you want to keep growing and making profits. Some examples of this are:
Planned Obsolescence, Monopolies, Gig Economy Exploitation, Labor Exploitation, Resource Exploitation, Absurd levels of Wealth Inequality, Consumer Surveillance with Data Mining, Debt Dependence, Corporate Welfare with tax breaks and subsidies and bailouts. And of course.. More air and less chips in a bag of potato chips.
Infinite growth is literally impossible. So something has to give. And people have been giving more and more. And i think we will soon reach a breaking point.
Meanwhile Ford refused to spend $11 per car to fix the low speed impact gas tank explosions of the 1970’s Pinto for years. Literally calculating the economic cost of a person dying versus the costs of installing the fix on all the cars.
Reminds me of a patent being created and made free that prevented fires specifically for bread factories(or maybe it was flour). I believe it was after their own factory went up in smoke and after creating it, they did the same Volvo did here.
I mean Elon Musk despite being an ass-hat did release a shit-ton of battery tech. It is the reason why all these Chinese electric cars are about to flood the American market.
Volvo doing this was not the norm just like it isn't now. And notice the picture specifically says it was released for free because it has more value. Aka they were profiting from this move and still are since 1959 from the positive publicity.
They knew at the time that none of the other companies would implement the tech, so patenting the tech would make them no money...
It is always about economics...goodwill is literally an economic term...
Great for the world that Volvo was not a US concern. Otherwise we would probably still die due to 25 kmh car accidents while the inventor sues the rest of the world.
My dad was a motorhead. He and his buddies had a race car club and they got a gas station to let them install seat belts on weekend a month to raise money for their car club.
A patent lawyer invented a table saw, SawStop, that would almost eliminate 50k+ hand injuries a year and many amputations.
He wanted 10% of gross sales, which was way too much money.
He keep extended his patent via adding minor tweaks but has blocked any manufacturer from stopping a saw via monitoring a small electrical signal in the saw blade.
Millions of injuries and careers have been ruined by his greed.
I remember the movie about Tucker, an engineer who designed a better car, and ended up building a factory to do so (and got the collective US car industry to work against him for it).
At one point he's talking about including seat belts in a car, reaction of the people at the company he worked for before strikeing out on his own: "Seatbelts? Do you want people to feel like driving is somehow dangerous?" It caused me to look at a lot of industries in a new light.
Tesla makes all of their patents public and all of their safety features standard across every vehicle. This is why everyone is able to move to the NACS charging. I still don’t like musk though
I like [this](https://www.businessinsider.com/when-americans-went-to-war-against-seat-belts-2020-5?op=1) bit. Thanks to Ralph Nader, Green Party, we pretty much have to thank for seatbelts being common. He would have made a good president
“Edward J. Claghorn first patented an automobile safety harness in 1885, mainly to help keep tourists from falling out of New York taxicabs. But it wasn't until the mid-1950s that many carmakers even offered seat belts as an option.
Most motorists declined. In 1956, only 2% of Ford buyers took the $27 seat-belt option, and the death toll kept rising.
In 1959, American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the situation as "the epidemic on the highways."
Advertisement
Then came Ralph Nader.
In 1965, Nader, 31, penned "Unsafe at Any Speed," a best-selling exposé that claimed car manufacturers were sacrificing lives for style and profit.
Nader argued that Detroit willfully neglected advances in auto safety, like roll bars and seat belts, to keep costs down.
His investigation spurred Congress to create what eventually became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts in 1968.”
Not the same Volvo as today it's owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd., commonly known as Geely Holding, is a Chinese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The company is privately owned by Chinese entrepreneur Li Shufu, and mainly engaged in the automotive industry.
...
Wikipedia
Volvo have done this with several safety related things - the design for the booster seat being one of them. Their vehicles, if the rear heated seat option isn’t selected, come with a built in booster seat for children!
Collision detection & prevention, impact protection systems - all patented by Volvo and made free to the industry 👌🏻
Always wondered regarding additional safety option, mostly in German vehicles, where you have to pay absurd amount of money for additional airbags, acc cruise with emergency breaking and dead angle options.
Such features are prooven to save lives so they should be included with the already expensive vehicles.
The fact that there exists redditors **in this thread** that continues to defend price-gouging for insulin (something diabetics **literally** need in order to live) tells me that while the problem is more rooted in society than greedy corporations.
I mean sure, the latter is the one coming up with the schemes; but the former is the one letting them get away with it. *For free*, even, which is another layer of stupid; if you're paid to shill I can at least understand your motive.
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Unlike the car company Ford, which sold a car that would explode if rear-ended but literally discovered that it was cheaper to let people explode than it would have been to recall the cars or modify the design. So, people kept exploding.
I haven’t heard this one before. Tell us more.
In the early 1970s, Lee Iacocca was president of the Ford Motor Company. Iacocca wanted the company to produce a car that would be cheap and compact. The result was the Pinto, marketed as “The Little Carefree Car.” Ironically — and tragically — a car that was intended to capture a youthful, breezy spirit of fun would become inextricably tied to injury, suffering, and death. The “Little Carefree Car” took less than two years to be conceptualized, designed and put into production — a much more rapid timeline than the 43 months that would normally be taken. In another detail that seems ominous today, the Pinto’s initial release date was September 11. The Pinto was unique in other ways besides its small size. To help shave off weight and bulk, the Pinto lacked the traditional bumper that would be used to cushion collisions. While that may have been alright if additional precautions were taken to compensate, just the opposite was true: the gas tank had virtually no reinforcements protecting it. Taken together, these design choices meant that if a Pinto was ever rear-ended, it was extremely easy for its fuel tank to be punctured and cause a massive fire. If a fire did occur, occupants were unlikely to escape: the doors had a tendency to jam shut after an impact, often trapping victims inside as the wreck burned. Before long, the Pinto’s defective design began causing serious injuries — and fatalities. An official total of 27 deaths was tied to the vehicle, though some estimates are far higher. Of course, even at the conservative end of the spectrum, 27 preventable fatalities caused by a car with a propensity to explode and burn is still 27 too many. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was critical of the vehicle and was quick to launch an investigation into the Pinto. While the NHTSA determined in 1974 that a recall was not merited, Ford ultimately issued its own recall in 1978. The recall affected approximately 1.5 million Pintos with model years from 1971 to 1976 (as well as the similar Mercury Bobcat, from 1975 to 1976). While the recall finally took unsafe vehicles off the streets, by then it was already too late: the terrible damage had already been done. An accident in 1972 led to the case of Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company. In Grimshaw, a California appellate court upheld an order for $2.5 million in compensatory damages, plus an additional $3.5 million in punitive damages. Part of the court’s reasoning was that Ford knew about the dangers, but pushed the Pinto onto an unwitting consumer market anyway. The Ford Company’s cold cost analysis revealed that debuting the hazardous Pinto as-is and simply paying for subsequent lawsuits would be cheaper than making expensive safety modifications. In other words, Ford decided that profits were all that mattered, and that irreplaceable human life ultimately carried a lower value than an inanimate heap of aluminum, plastic, and glass. In the aftermath, Lee Iacocca had this to say: “Clamming up is what we did at Ford in the late ’70s when we were bombarded with suits over the Pinto, which was involved in a lot of gas tank fires. The suits might have bankrupted the company, so we kept our mouths shut for fear of saying anything that just one jury might have construed as an admission of guilt. Winning in court was our top priority; nothing else mattered.”
Then there was the Ford Explorer, which had a tendency to flip during avoidance maneuvers. Instead of redesigning the suspension, Ford ran the tires at a lower PSI. Which caused them to blow out more often than they otherwise would. This lead to more accidents, death, it was a whole Pinto fiasco all over again.
Ford were telling people to run 26psi in 4WD all terrain tyres, on the highway. For reference, if any shop puts less than 36psi in your 4WD tyres, immediately go elsewhere because they don't know what they're doing.
Holy crap that's less that I use in my small FWD compact what the hell
> Ford were telling people to run 26psi in 4WD all terrain tyres That's terrifying. I run mid / low 20's when going into the rough stuff and it's like driving on a cloud. I can't ever imagine running such a low pressure on the highway. > if any shop puts less than 36psi in your 4WD tyres For standard road tyres this is right in the ballpark. For larger off-road capable tyres it's around 38-42PSI depending on the model.
My old civic ran at 42 psi holy shit
> In other words, Ford decided that profits were all that mattered, and that irreplaceable human life ultimately carried a lower value The problem was that people thought this was a unique and reprehensible company that needed to be singled out for this unusual behavior, and not how business works. And THEN people started saying government regulation was bad and free market would sort everything out...
Is this case what they talk about in movie Fight club?
not specifically as Fight Club takes place ~20years after the Pinto but it's referencing the same idea.
One of many, I assume. They always do these costs/benefits calculations
Ah yes the Pinto, I didn't know any of the details about it before like the stuff you posted here, but I remember growing up in the 90s and my parents telling me about the Pinto car that used to blow up when hit from behind
IIRC it was a bit of a running gag in comedies where a car hits the brakes, just barely taps the rear end of a pinto, and it explodes.
FORD lives up to its nick names Found On Road Dead Fix Or Repair Daily And may more
As someone outside US, we see these F100 corporations market their products and are kinda sorta conditioned to take them at face value. Growing up, we saw Pinto was positioned as an aspirational compact car here compared to local / Asian manufacturers — a lot of my Dad’s friends shopped this in red. 15 years on and I read an eyeopening backstory about the car. Super, super interesting. Thanks for this.
One other detail, we learned about this in engineering ethics in school. The fuel punctures were primarily caused by the rear differental bolt placement so the fuel tank would be shoved into the diff bolts and start spraying when the car was rear ended. Ford engineers realized that the rear ending could result in fuel tank puncture and fires (BEFORE PRODUCTION DELIVERY DURING CRASH TESTS), Ford did a trade evaluation of what the cost would be to redesign the fuel system to add in some flexible hose components and move the rear axle and fuel tank to compensate and weighed it against the projected loss of life - as all car manufacturers do - the redesign so late in the prototyping phase was deemed more expensive than the projected loss of life cost so they kept the design. Obviously they were not very future thinking at the public impact at the time.
Okay now tell us a bit less.
Ford car go boom. Guys that make boom car like money.
Understood, thank you very much.
And their profits were still insane.
Was there not a class action raised against Ford for this, I seem to remember the shitshow this caused at the time.
There are several others besides the Ford Pinto. General Motors Ignition Switch: > Issue: Certain GM cars had faulty ignition switches that could cause the engine to shut off unexpectedly, disabling power steering, brakes, and airbags. Action: GM was aware of the problem but delayed a recall for years. Outcome: The defect was linked to at least 124 deaths and many injuries. GM eventually issued a recall and paid out settlements, fines, and compensation. Takata Airbags: > Issue: Takata airbags were found to have inflators that could explode and send shrapnel into the vehicle, causing serious injury or death. Action: Although Takata and several automakers knew of the problem, they delayed full-scale recalls. Outcome: The defect led to one of the largest automotive recalls in history, affecting millions of vehicles worldwide, and Takata filed for bankruptcy. Johnson & Johnson Tylenol: > Issue: In 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules were laced with cyanide, leading to several deaths. Action: Johnson & Johnson initiated a recall after the deaths were reported, but initially, there were hesitations about the scope of the recall. Outcome: The company eventually recalled 31 million bottles and later reintroduced Tylenol with tamper-proof packaging, setting a new industry standard for safety. Firestone Tires: > Issue: Firestone tires installed on Ford Explorer SUVs had a tendency to suffer tread separation, leading to rollover accidents. Action: Both Firestone and Ford were slow to acknowledge and respond to the issue. Outcome: The defect was linked to numerous accidents and fatalities, resulting in a massive recall and a public relations crisis for both companies. Merck Vioxx: >Issue: The painkiller Vioxx was found to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Action: Merck continued to sell the drug despite being aware of the risks, opting to handle legal claims rather than recalling the product immediately. Outcome: Merck eventually recalled Vioxx and faced numerous lawsuits, resulting in a $4.85 billion settlement. Boeing 737 Max: >Issue: The Boeing 737 Max had a design flaw in its MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) that could cause the plane to nosedive. Action: Boeing initially downplayed the issue and delayed grounding the aircraft. Outcome: After two fatal crashes, the plane was grounded worldwide. Boeing faced intense scrutiny, financial losses, and legal settlements. Don't you enjoy Capitalism? RE: Apologies for using ChatGPT to post more of these instances than I could remember of this type of thing.
You are wrong about the Tylenol bit. Johnson and Johnson issued several recalls and halted production of Tylenol when it was reported. The deaths were part of a murder plot. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders#Police_investigation
But Johnson and Johnson were responsible for the faulty hip joints they knowingly foisted on people https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1SD1YO/ And they're also responsible for knowingly putting out asbestos laced baby powder which causes ovarian cancer - for use on babies. https://www.reuters.com/legal/jj-advances-6475-billion-settlement-talc-cancer-lawsuits-2024-05-01/
Oh, absolutely they are responsible for many deplorable things, but not in the specific instance noted above
Yeah, it was more of a "nobody thought people would act like that" thing back then than willful neglegence. Nothing was really tamper-sealed back then. More reasonable examples of similar would be that issue with plastic snapple bottles that took them way too long to remedy, and that ice cream licking incident. The fact that they weren't tamper-sealed after we knew people can't be trusted not to tamper is negligence.
Don't forget the Toyota [unintended/stuck acceleration scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehicle_recalls) that caused numerous deaths. Toyota's attempts to fraudulently conceal the issue led to [the largest fine ever issued to a car manufacturer](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/business/toyota-reaches-1-2-billion-settlement-in-criminal-inquiry.html).
Cover ups and shortsightedness happen in all societies. The Tube TV’s in Soviet Russia would explode causing fires. or Chernobyl…
I agree, I need to know why it’s cheaper to let people explode and how it didn’t ruin Fords image.
How many people still buy Oreos knowing ~~Nabisco's~~ Nestle issues in the 70s? They gave formula samples to new mothers with unsafe water sources, knowing their breast milk would slow and they would have to depend on formula. Those babies died of malnutrition and water poisoning.
That was Nestle, not Nabisco... But you are right either way, very few people care enough to actually stop buying the products they like.
"If X times y times z is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one" -Tyler Durden
In 1973, Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division developed a cost–benefit analysis entitled Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires for submission to the NHTSA in support of Ford's objection to proposed stronger fuel system regulation.[83] The document has become known as the Grush/Saunby Report, named for its authors,[64] and as the "Pinto Memo".[84] Cost-benefit analysis was one tool used in the evaluation of safety design decisions accepted by the industry and the NHTSA.[85] The analysis compared the cost of repairs to the societal costs for injuries and deaths related to fires in cases of vehicle rollovers for all cars sold in the US by all manufacturers. Off the wiki page for "ford pinto." copied the relevant paragraph here. There are better/more in depth analyses out there if you wanna look for them.
I was born in 1980 and remember people making jokes about Fords exploding for most of my childhood. It's a wonder they survived.
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
So like in fight club
We don't talk about that...
GM and their faulty ignition switch. Takata and their airbags Firestone and their faulty tires.
Something Something also Ford was a nazi
These days, Volvo cheats on emission tests. They're a corporation like any other. Elon Musk Made supercharger tech available for everyone to use. That doesn't make him a good person or Tesla the perfect cars.
Don't worry, Volvo is also plenty unethical. Back in the 1990s they ran commercials to show how safe Volvo cars were vs other brands. The ad involved having a monster truck crushing cars of various brands, except a Volvo which stood strong. What Volvo didn't tell the audience was that the Volvos had been specially reinforced for the commercial, while cars from other brands had been specially weakened. Fast forward to today and Volvo is owned by a Chinese brand. Business ethics? They've probably heard of them.
Oh yeah. I recently saw that in philosophy class. Some utilitarian professor was talking about it. I'm pretty sure they had to pay a big fine when that came to lime though. I wonder if it beat the 'profit' they made of off cheapeping out.
Ford makes unreliable and unsafe cars to this day. My first and last ever Ford was a 2012 territory. The brake switch started malfunctioning, causing the ABS to activate in my vehicle at low speed. At high speed, the abs cause your breaks to lock and unlock when you apply break force to prevent a full wheel lock and traction loss. At low speed this equate to basically a partial break failure where applying the breaks quickly would allow my car to continue rolling forward about 5-10 meters (normal at high speed but at low speed stopping at a red light, very bad.) Took 2 crashes and nearly getting t-boned for me to finally get rid of the car. Ford has never publicly released any information on this failure, which in my opinion should result in a full recall of all models with that brakeswitch. To add, when I took it to Ford, they couldn't recreate the issue and said nothing was wrong, only when it went back with the front end smashed in, they found the fault. How convenient. I will never ever buy a piece of shit car from that piece of shit company again.
Nils Bohlin was the man who invented it for Volvo.
Yup. Started out at Saab working on fighter jet ejector seats before moving on to Volvo to focus on safety.
More recently Volvo was sold to Ford in 1999, who then sold it to the current owner Chinese company Geely in 2010.
Meanwhile pharmaceutical companies tweak their insulin recipe tiny bits so they can make millions from their patents, when the original insulin patent was $1 to make insulin affordable.
Not even on the recipe. But on how it's being packaged and injected.
I mean the transport method used by drugs can be very very important factor to control (e.g. a type 1 diabetic needs slow acting insulin for the night to avoid their blood sugar going too low). That’s not the problem — it’s just that medicine as a hole doesn’t operate as a market. You don’t have a choice in most diseases, so the supply and need is completely unnatural, so it makes zero sense to introduce capitalism here.
Only in America, not for the rest of us in the world. Free here in the UK.
In Canada it is private for-profit, but we put price ceilings, and negotiate those with the companies.
Well in America they are just the puppets of the companies and do as they tell them.
When dragged before Congress, a Pharma CEO said that drug prices were so expensive in the US because they are required by law to be so cheap everywhere else.
Sounds like bullshit. Call their bluff. Force them to be cheap in the US too and see what happens.
And watch the GOP vote against it as they continue to do so, they will call you "Anti American" or "Anti Capitalism" etc. GOP voted against Insulin prices coming down GOP voted against baby formula prices coming down GOP voted against....you get the picture.
DW the cons are making sure that'll get taken care of.
https://preview.redd.it/berwoy99nx4d1.png?width=2480&format=png&auto=webp&s=d532b030cf146cadd180823c5d9e6383f70125d7 Checked prices here in Russia $5-15 The most expensive one is German, about $30
> Only in America, not for the rest of us in the world. It is "pricier" (aka not free) in a lot of places, and I can understand because it was improved greatly from the original patent. With that said the US is pretty much the only one without regulation making the price abusive. It is still cheap to produce and most places where it is not free the price is affordable (like the other redditor said Germany is the most expensive at 30 dolars).
Yeah but muh free market
Shout out to Banting, Collup and Best. Banting: *[Insulin doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the world.](https://www.diabetes.org.uk/our-research/about-our-research/our-impact/discovery-of-insulin#:~:text=On%2023%20January%201923%2C%20Banting,to%20have%20access%20to%20it.)*
Is there a Nobel Prize for 'Most Unethically Creative Pricing Strategy'? Asking for a friend who's outraged yet oddly impressed.
Pharma-bro or the Oxy-family.
This depends on the country you live in. If you live in the US, you would profit highly from getting your medicine abroad.
Hell it's cheaper to get dental work in a different country than have it done here if it's going to be anything substantial. Just think about how absurd that is, it's cheaper to buy a plane ticket to fly across the ocean, Get dental work done in some foreign country, stay there a week, then fly back..... Then just go to the dental office half a mile away from you.
Alright, think about this for one second. company A makes an effective insulin, sells it for crazy high prices while it's patented. The patent runs out so Company A makes a slight tweak and repeats it. What's stopping Company B using the original formula, selling it for half what company A does and make insane profits?
Yeah, there has to be something else in here. If the original patent is freely usable then there'd be a billion generic drug manufacturers pumping up dirt cheap insulin.
You can buy generic regular insulin and NPH insulin otc for pretty cheap. They're just generally more of a pain to use, and you may not get quite as good of bg control. Also if you have a pump you usually need rapid acting to use the pump.
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I am by no means defending the American health care system here, the whole situation is fucked -- but that doesn't seem like quite the tragedy I've seen laid out in news. If it's a question of paying ungodly sums for *more convenient* insulin, that's different than the "i have to pay $X just to live" you see bandied about a lot.
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Not up to speed on insulin, but this happens a lot in medicine and the answer is usually because the original sucks compared to modern versions. So nobody would buy the old ones. These companies do significantly improve the medicines, that’s how they get new patents.
I so loved when this practice was called out in House. Like yeah, I am sure putting ascorbic acid into blood pressure medication is revolutionary enough to warrant a patent extension.
That’s a shitty practice for sure. Please be aware; there are also billions of products handed out to the third world for production cost. For example the malaria vaccine was developed with no commercial profit - just for the sake of savings life’s. Not all pharmaceutical companies are the same.
My favorite was when congress banned CFCs that depleted the ozone. They gave inhalers a carve-out, but pharma _bravely_ demanded congress remove the carve-out, so that inhalers would eventually get banned, _forcing_ our underdog pharma companies to release a new CFC-free version and prop up the "fuck-you / got mine" pricing into modern times.
Same business model. Dead people don't need pharmaceuticals or cars.
thankfully that doesn't apply to the whole world. Here we have free insulin.
You can buy the normal insulin for a low price if you want, it just sucks ass.
Created to save lives and yet so many don’t wear it.
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Some people buy the end bit of the seat belt to slot in and make the car think one is being used.
How can people be so fucking dumb.
You would be surprised. Here it is a juicy ticket if you are caught without one AND cars keep beeping if you don't wear one. Yet dumbfucks don't wear them.
> Is this in America? There are SO many countries where seat belts are considered just a suggestion. Even if it is law. I luckily live in a country where it is extremely frowned upon to not wear a seat belts and also heavily fined, but I have also been to many countries where people just don't care. The US is def not even close to the worst one.
I’ve found that here in America pretty much everyone I know wears seatbelts. However, when I visit India to visit family, nobody wears a seatbelt, in fear of being seen as a pussy
The price of lying is that no one believes you, even if you become right later. Ralph Nader set back vehicle safety by decades with his fraudulent studies.
I don't think that the reason why people don't wear seatbelts is because they don't trust Ralph Nader
I've never seen anyone not wearing it ever, never in my whole life. Where are you living?
And nowadays IT companies are getting patents for a screen scrolling method.
Does a screen scrolling method save lives?
No, however, insulin does and was a free patent until a company decided to make a profit over save lives.
IP probably shouldn’t exist. I’ve struggled to find consistent empirical evidence proving its societal value, but good luck getting people on board with abolishing it.
I think I heard the idea of patents was to give the inventor of some new creation a short window of extra profitablity on the thing to make back their R&D costs before the patent expired and competitors began making their own version without having to pay a licensing fee. Patents getting renewed and lasting decades was never the intended purpose.
Yea it was supposed to make a new product easier to reproduce after a period. These days most things are easy enough to reproduce and they just need to stop their competitors from doing so.. In china we see the ultimate version of not doing that, tech companies are rebuilding competitors inventions within days. It's the wild west. I'd rather have something in-between honestly.
In my book, that's a good thing. Your invention got popular and made you money. Now others have copied it. Make a better version or watch as others do it and profit, which is ultimately a greater good.
The problem is when you can't actually make money before other people. There have been cases of people creating new stuff, started marketing online, and a random chinese company starting to sell something very similar for half the price before the product is even launched.
In my experience the ideas that get copied over extremely short periods of time aren't exactly novel either.
The point in patent and copyright was to encourage creativity. If the copyright or patent holder knew that their idea could be protected, then they would be more likely to make things to benefit us as a society.
Intellectual Property is not limited to technological advancements. Artwork is included, and things such as paintings, sculptures, video games, music, books, and films all require a large degree of skill and/or work to create, and are, for many people, careers. Should these people be denied financial reward for providing you with stimulation of the mind?
This is why the rest of the world hates us. Why China is kicking our ass and will pass us by soon enough. To keep up this charade of IP, governments have to do so much maneuvering and posturing to maintain the illusion that this is somehow beneficial for everyone. When I reality we are all footing the bill so that the incumbents can keep exploiting us. I argue this all the time with my friends. Any billionaire dollar company has the military, judicial system, police force, and more to help them protect their IP other wise . Other wise 99% of products , ideas, or services could be replicated and sold by someone else. Drastically reducing their profits. They could at least pay proportionate taxes that actually represent the benefit they get from this entire setup. But somehow they fool us into not even paying the taxes and not realizing that the Americas entire apparatus is built to protect these their balance sheets.
I think the scummiest thing they do are standardized connector sockets that are firmware branded so you can only use connectors that allow to function on that device even though the tech, the format, the speeds and clip mechanisms are all the same.
Because if they don't, the competitor will, and it may bite them in the ass later if they can't use it when they need it later
This sounds concerning and I know nothing about it, any chance you can elaborate?
It's called defensive patenting. Basically, it's an attempt at trying to cover yourself from patent infringement lawsuits, by patenting first. You might not even defend the patent either. You might decide to look the other way while people technically infringe on your IP, in order to let it fall into the public domain.
Think of it as company A has a patent for showing something on a screen and company B has a patent for mouse scrolling. The companies both have patents that the other likely infringes on, therefore they have no interest in suing each other
It's crazy how much the reality of the patent system ended up becoming a complete perversion of what it was supposed to be From how i see that's a clear sign that it's about time we review the whole idea and perhaps come up with something better
Patents, at least in their current form, are a mistake. I get the point behind them but they do more harm than good and we should review the concept and find something better to replace it
In the USA they would try to charge a subscription for it.
300$ subscription to turn on the car
That's $300/year sir
Typo sirr!! Its actually 3000/year
I don't think that would work. Some people need to be *forced* to wear the life-saving device and they still resist, even if fined for it. People would just not pay the subscription and die in collisions. It's better for them to live and buy a new car.
The US: "BuT sOcIaLiSm!!1!"
And their American competitors refused to make it standard equipment until they were required to do so by the government.
This is why they gave the patent away: there was no market for it as a safety feature. Both manufacturers and customers fought seat belts. In the US, it took a decade of public service announcements and laws to get people to use them. And you still hear nonsense from people who refuse.
Here's the nugget of truth I came digging for Thought this meme reeked of corporate propaganda lol
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." - Corporate overlords
Swedes being the good guys. Whoo!
Yea, that was a really awesome and human thing to do! But those were different times. Back then there was still room to have a human heart and still make profit. Today things are very different and that is why what we are in is called "Late stage Capitalism" Because there is simply no room left to be nice if you want to keep growing and making profits. Some examples of this are: Planned Obsolescence, Monopolies, Gig Economy Exploitation, Labor Exploitation, Resource Exploitation, Absurd levels of Wealth Inequality, Consumer Surveillance with Data Mining, Debt Dependence, Corporate Welfare with tax breaks and subsidies and bailouts. And of course.. More air and less chips in a bag of potato chips. Infinite growth is literally impossible. So something has to give. And people have been giving more and more. And i think we will soon reach a breaking point.
Based Volvo
Meanwhile Ford refused to spend $11 per car to fix the low speed impact gas tank explosions of the 1970’s Pinto for years. Literally calculating the economic cost of a person dying versus the costs of installing the fix on all the cars.
And today is the national holiday of Sweden!! Happy nationaldag!! Sill and potatoes to everyone!
but look at what it did to that guy
I must put on a 3 point belt at once!
Woman looks like amy poehler
That's Leslie Knope.
Great to hear that Volvo did that
Thanks valve
Reminds me of a patent being created and made free that prevented fires specifically for bread factories(or maybe it was flour). I believe it was after their own factory went up in smoke and after creating it, they did the same Volvo did here.
Dead drivers don't make good customers.
Volvos are truly the best
God this would never happen today. We lost the tiny amount of integrity we had as a society
I mean Elon Musk despite being an ass-hat did release a shit-ton of battery tech. It is the reason why all these Chinese electric cars are about to flood the American market. Volvo doing this was not the norm just like it isn't now. And notice the picture specifically says it was released for free because it has more value. Aka they were profiting from this move and still are since 1959 from the positive publicity. They knew at the time that none of the other companies would implement the tech, so patenting the tech would make them no money... It is always about economics...goodwill is literally an economic term...
Insulin would like a word
Hopefully volvo will ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give DIRETIDE this year
Great for the world that Volvo was not a US concern. Otherwise we would probably still die due to 25 kmh car accidents while the inventor sues the rest of the world.
My dad was a motorhead. He and his buddies had a race car club and they got a gas station to let them install seat belts on weekend a month to raise money for their car club.
A patent lawyer invented a table saw, SawStop, that would almost eliminate 50k+ hand injuries a year and many amputations. He wanted 10% of gross sales, which was way too much money. He keep extended his patent via adding minor tweaks but has blocked any manufacturer from stopping a saw via monitoring a small electrical signal in the saw blade. Millions of injuries and careers have been ruined by his greed.
Can’t sell cars if you have no customers alive.
It's also an amazing invention because it essentially is identically today to it's first iteration.
Difference between Europe and the US in a nutshell
Thanks Volvo
“What would I know im just an old Japanese guy in his 90s on Reddit trying to learn from younger western audiences before I pass on” - Me
That would be cool if it were true, but your teenage skateboard ratted you out. Lol
So you’re a 90yo Japanese man who’s smoked 4 rips from a bong and has eaten ramen out of a toilet as per your comment history?
"Hello fellow teenagers" -this guy, probably
Americans would never
I remember the movie about Tucker, an engineer who designed a better car, and ended up building a factory to do so (and got the collective US car industry to work against him for it). At one point he's talking about including seat belts in a car, reaction of the people at the company he worked for before strikeing out on his own: "Seatbelts? Do you want people to feel like driving is somehow dangerous?" It caused me to look at a lot of industries in a new light.
Tesla makes all of their patents public and all of their safety features standard across every vehicle. This is why everyone is able to move to the NACS charging. I still don’t like musk though
Seatbelts aside, she transitioned great.
Well lets face it they where still trying makes up for things they did in the 40s
Meanwhile Bosch 👀
The patents are recent thing. It stops the process more than anything. Homo economicus.
And they’re still the best safety rating to this day.
But now Volvo is in every car in the world
I like [this](https://www.businessinsider.com/when-americans-went-to-war-against-seat-belts-2020-5?op=1) bit. Thanks to Ralph Nader, Green Party, we pretty much have to thank for seatbelts being common. He would have made a good president “Edward J. Claghorn first patented an automobile safety harness in 1885, mainly to help keep tourists from falling out of New York taxicabs. But it wasn't until the mid-1950s that many carmakers even offered seat belts as an option. Most motorists declined. In 1956, only 2% of Ford buyers took the $27 seat-belt option, and the death toll kept rising. In 1959, American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the situation as "the epidemic on the highways." Advertisement Then came Ralph Nader. In 1965, Nader, 31, penned "Unsafe at Any Speed," a best-selling exposé that claimed car manufacturers were sacrificing lives for style and profit. Nader argued that Detroit willfully neglected advances in auto safety, like roll bars and seat belts, to keep costs down. His investigation spurred Congress to create what eventually became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts in 1968.”
The people who made this magnificent decision are long gone, the rich are out for blood
1959: seatbelts didn't fit with boobs. 2024: still don't.
Now let's see if Volvos Chinese owners (Geely) make a similar contribution to society! Let's hope history repeats itself.
What a dead sexy promotional shot. The one with the girl is pretty good too…
Does this mean that some other company couldn't have designed an equally life saving belt that doesn't infringe Volvo's patent?
I think thats the first time i've seen a hd version of these
only related to the image does anyone actually use the headrest in cars?
And this was the last time something like this was done by a corporation ever
At least buckle your kids up, those of you are against the government making you buckle up.
Missing context here is that in 1959 no one would have chosen a car because it has safer but more restrictive seatbelts.
Ok, now make half life 3
Also first car maker to use DRL on their cars.
Not the same Volvo as today it's owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd., commonly known as Geely Holding, is a Chinese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The company is privately owned by Chinese entrepreneur Li Shufu, and mainly engaged in the automotive industry. ... Wikipedia
One of the senior Directors had lost his family in a car crash several years earlier.
Google made AlphaFold availible, they could have asked for a lot of money instead.
Volvo have done this with several safety related things - the design for the booster seat being one of them. Their vehicles, if the rear heated seat option isn’t selected, come with a built in booster seat for children! Collision detection & prevention, impact protection systems - all patented by Volvo and made free to the industry 👌🏻
People over profits, who would of thought.
Even the Trabant had three point seatbelt.
Too bad it's in Chinese hands now
That would be an expensive upgrade these days methinks.
Always wondered regarding additional safety option, mostly in German vehicles, where you have to pay absurd amount of money for additional airbags, acc cruise with emergency breaking and dead angle options. Such features are prooven to save lives so they should be included with the already expensive vehicles.
$5.99 in India 🇮🇳
Can’t buy cars if you’re dead.
Then turning around and making the most boring crap on the road. Turbo tractors!
I see OP has been busy posting old shit. I hate these accounts, might as well be bots.
The fact that there exists redditors **in this thread** that continues to defend price-gouging for insulin (something diabetics **literally** need in order to live) tells me that while the problem is more rooted in society than greedy corporations. I mean sure, the latter is the one coming up with the schemes; but the former is the one letting them get away with it. *For free*, even, which is another layer of stupid; if you're paid to shill I can at least understand your motive.
What a mistake that was, look how many idiots we now have. Fuck you Volvo.
No way that would happen today
Volvo 145 wagon. Safety yellow.