urn deaths, 180 serious burn injuries, and 2100 burned vehicles at a cost of $200,000 per burn death, $67,000 per serious burn injury, and $700 per burned vehicle which came up to a total cost of $49.5 million. The estimated cost to prevent leakage in their cars and trucks was $11 dollars each. So with sales of 11 million cars and 1.5 million light trucks the total cost to improve fuel tank safety would be $137 million.3 It was not until 1977 that Ford felt it needed to change the design of the Pinto in order to remedy these fuel tank problems.2Following numerous lawsuits filed by burn victims accusing Ford of defectively designing the Ford Pinto's fuel tank the issue finally got national attention. In the 1977 September/October issue of Mother Jones there was an article written by Mark Dowie named "Pinto Madness". This article told of Ford's decision to sell a car in which they knew hundreds of people would be burnt to death. To make sure that this information did not just stay in the pages of Mother Jones, Dowie called a press conference on August 10, 1977 in Washington D.C. in order to get national exposure.3 That day as a result of this announcement the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a preliminary evaluation of the Pinto's Dangers. One month later NHTSA announced that they had initiated a formal defect investigation to determine whether the problem constitutes a safety related defect within the meaning of the National Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966.2 Mid-February of the next year the Pinto's problems were in the media's headlines again. In a landmark case a jury awarded Richard Grimshaw, a Pinto burn victim, $125 million in punitive damages and another $2.8 million in compensatory damages, "The largest award ever made by a jury in a personal injury case".2 About the same time $666,280 was awarded to the family of Lily Grey, who had died in an accident. These amounts were much more than the...
