Pinto Fires

Pinto Fires

Assuming that it is easy to be ethical; means that people will without a second thought know that when faced with any kind of moral dilemma, they will automatically choose to do right versus doing wrong. However, rarely do ethical decisions present themselves by raising the red flag, and decision makers may not always realize when they are facing an ethical issue.

In 1972, Dennis Gioia, was the recall coordinator for Ford Motor Company, a major part of Gioia's responsibilities included following a cognitive script to determine based on thousands of accident reports, which vehicles were candidates for recall for better parts design and safety issues. However, in the case of the Pinto, Gioia and others responsible for vehicle production and safety failed to issue a recall for the car despite the fact of knowing that these vehicles had a high potential to burst into flames during rear end collisions.

For Ford, the case of the burning Pinto's was a controversial period in the company's history. Determined to keep up with the foreign competitors who were producing and selling subcompact cars with record breaking success, Fords answer was the Pinto, a subcompact that was easy to produce, reasonably priced, and good on gas.

Fords answer to the sub-compact car market demands depended greatly on the success of the Pinto, and in its efforts to conquer its share of this rapidly growing marketplace, Ford who typically took approximately 43 months to produce a new car finished production in only 25 months for the Pinto. During production vehicles go through a series of steps before being available for purchase including safety car crash testing from the front, side, and rear; Ford however, bypassed this protocol and released their car without testing the rear end impact until it was already on the market. After conducting the rear-end tests what the company found out is that due to the placement of the gas tank, in a rear end collision, the car had a high potential of catching fire; which ultimately happened several dozen times, leaving hundreds of consumers badly burned, and taking the lives of many others.

Despite the fact the Pinto had major deficiencies, it sales continued to skyrocket. From the consumer's perspective it seems they were happy with the product received at such a reasonable price, and for the company, the sales of their compact vehicle exceeded expectations. Although the company was producing a car that was selling at an astounding rate, the question still remains; was it the most ethical decision to continue to sell cars with such severe defects as the Pinto had.

The generalization theory states that for an action to be ethical,