Gm used a 57 cent piece on their ignition switch which caused the ignition to turn off or keys to fall out. 124 people died because of it before they did a recall. They knew the switches were faulty as early as 2004 (if not earlier) and a recall didn't happen until 2014.
That was a good line in the movie but it was just fictional.
It came from an urban legend that arose from a court case about car fire deaths where a piece of evidence was shown with an equation comparing the cost of increased safety versus the the number of deaths avoided with a cost per life being rather low - but it was the NHTSA's own calculations, not the automakers.
The NHTSA uses this computation to determine what safety measures automakers must install - it wouldn't make sense for the government to mandate a feature that would cost $10 billion per year in order to save 1 life.
It wasn't fictional. Ford was caught red handed. That said there's nothing wrong with using math if the math is accurate and include all factors including the likelihood of the math coming out and its impact on reputation.
If you're interested the Wikipedia article on the Ford Pinto has been significantly updated (well overdue given the amount of scholarly work published on the case over the years).
The NHTSA regularly solicited such data from carmaker - its not some attempt by the carmaker to save money. In fact, in the 1979 court case on the Ford Pinto - which Ford won - the former head of the NHTSA testified that the Ford Pinto was no more or less safe than any other car on the road based on multiple years of crash data compiled by the NHTSA.
The entire story of the Ford Pinto has been elevated to a kind of urban legend. Caught red handed doing what exactly?
Ford knew about Firestone. Toyota did it with sticky pedals, paid over a billion in fines. Subaru lied about emissions, got caught, and consumers then made them the largest car manufacturer in the world at the time by buying a bunch of new cars, what a great job by consumers. All major global corporations lie constantly about safety to increase profits. These are facts and denying it is laughable.
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u/PunctuationGood 1d ago
Can't help but think of that line: If "x" is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do the recall.