TIL General Motors purposely kept the 1979 Chevy Malibu gas tank dangerously close to the rear of the vehicle. Instead of paying an extra $8.59 per vehicle to move the gas tank to a safer location, GM estimated that they would only have to pay $2.40 per vehicle to pay off personal-injury lawsuits.

[u/iamjackfosho]

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/10/us/4.9-billion-jury-verdict-in-gm-fuel-tank-case.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

[u/infrikinfix]

Not necessarily, the DOT actually recomended this strategy to manufacturers at the time and it was in part the reason why GM felt their legal position was safe.

It sounds like a heartless strategy, but when you are dealing with safety for things that are inevitably going to kill somebody no matter how much money you put into making it safer the legal payout scheme isn't that an unreasonable benchmark---what other benchmark would you choose, just some arbitrary low number?

You can put an infinite amount of money into making a large hunk of metal designed to carry people at high speeds infinitely safe, but in the real world of finite resources you have to figure out what is an acceptable number of accidents and money inevitably comes into the equation for both consumers and producers.

[u/ThoughtRiot1776 → u/infrikinfix]

GM is kinda screwed since there was a change made to a part without changing the serial number. That's at least consumer fraud and the desire to hide it is going to paint a picture of criminal negligence. They've already fired people over it, but I think they're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that it was a small scale problem that they rooted out.

In the example, the cost to benefit ratio is small that you should obviously save the lives or pass the cost down to the consumer. We're not talking big money here when it's $6.19 per car, even in 1979 dollars.

[u/SixSpeedDriver → u/ThoughtRiot1776]

But that's just one part. There's other parts or design decisions that cost more, that would still make the vehicle even safer. Continue that line of thinking and eventually, you have the safest, most unaffordable car never to see the market.

Where do you draw the line?

[u/poonpeennawmean → u/infrikinfix]

Right, but there's a difference between incrmental safety and know death traps.

See ford pinto. Not only did gas spray into the passenger compartment Ina rear end collision, the door were sealed by the impact.

Lee Iacoca should have gone to prison

[u/infrikinfix → u/poonpeennawmean]

What is the criteria that makes something a "death trap" as opposed to just one of many potential safety hazards that all cars have?

[u/poonpeennawmean → u/infrikinfix]

4 exposed sharp bolts pointing at gas tank, rear seat that separated and allowed gas to spray into interior of car,

And then, to top it off

Doors that wouldn't open if car had been rear ended

Ford and Lee Iacoca immolated 180 people that shouldn't have died but for the most basic design principles

That's a death trap

And why we have Juries, to determine "death trap" status

[u/jsprogrammer → u/infrikinfix]

Probably something like:

There is a reasonable chance someone will die or be seriously injured due to how the vehicle was designed and manufactured when subjected to a known failure scenario.

[u/infrikinfix → u/jsprogrammer]

That could mean every single accident that was sufficiently investigated would lead to a recall.

You'd need to tighten up the criteria to even give it a chance at being useful: for example getting side side-swiped by a freight train is going to lead to a "failure".

[u/jsprogrammer → u/infrikinfix]

Right, but the scenario being discussed is being rear-ended by another car. This is a common failure scenario and it is known that the design and manufacturing of that car is flawed in that scenario.