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My understanding of the automotive industry is that they cut corners everywhere they can because they know it’ll save more money than a lawsuit or recall will c
by theshadowknows 5y ago
My understanding of the automotive industry is that they cut corners everywhere they can because they know it’ll save more money than a lawsuit or recall will cost. Do they do these things and when someone dies or raises a stink only then do they do the recall.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bumby 5y agoThis is largely urban legend from the Corvair debacle when an internal document showed someone comparing costs of lawsuits to a cost of recall. I don’t think it ever made it into some sort of policy, it was just a math wonk running numbers
- PhantomGremlin 5y agoThis is largely urban legend There are numerous anecdotes about cost/benefit analysis. Not just Corvair. The Ford Pinto fuel tank is one of the most notorious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis,_the_Pinto_Memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefi...
- bumby 5y agoI had originally typed the Pinto as the example, but changed it after thinking the memo in question was related to the Nader book. Regardless, the point still stands. From your link: “The general misunderstanding of the document, as presented by Mother Jones, gave it an operational significance it never had” and that the memo “explains in part of his Mother Jones article that Ford employees wrote this document as part of an ongoing lobbying effort to influence NHTSA (24, 28). But his readers have relied exclusively on his other claim, that it was the "internal" (20, 24) memo on which Ford based its decision to market the dangerous Pinto and settle the few inevitable lawsuits” That’s what I meant by it not translating to actual policy.
- theshadowknows 5y agoActually I was referring to the Ford rollover thing: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/ford-hid-suv-rollover-evidence-decades https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/ford-hid-suv-... And to the GM ignition thing: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/10/3/18073458/gm-car-recall https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/10/3/18073458/gm-car-r...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sircastor 5y agoHaving spent 7 years in automotive, I can tell you definitively this is not the case. Automakers are not interested in dealing with litigation, regardless of the cost-benefit-analysis. It is a mess. Discovery is a mess. The actual court work is a mess. No automaker wants to risk going down this road.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoI watched “Fight Club” too, good flic.