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Ford Pinto Case Study

767 Words4 Pages

Upon reading the case study titled “Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Ford Pinto,” and reviewing Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus, along with the essentials of the Utilitarian school of thought, it is quite clear that Ford Motor Company’s decision to greenlit the production of the Ford Pinto model without fixing the vehicle’s defective part was indeed morally permissible. The first set of reasoning which led me to this conclusion can be found directly in Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus. Within this, Bentham establishes the seven criteria one must consider when making a decision based on resulting pain or pleasure, whether it be for an individual or a large group of people. What is key to focus on, in this instance, is the criteria of the fecundity of the act (the chance the result has of being followed by sensations of the same kind), and the intensity of the resultant pleasure. In this instance, the end goal is the greatest amount of pleasure experienced by both Ford Motor Company and the American consumer, and the means being used to reach this end goal …show more content…

Say that Ford Company did implement further safety measures into the Ford Pinto, who is to say that individuals who purchased the model wouldn’t suffer automobile fatalities due to other mitigating factors. Driving a vehicle comes with an acceptance of the risks one might face while on the road, regardless of the “safety” of the vehicle in question. One cannot account for natural disasters, drunk drivers, and the like. So to say that had Ford Company implemented further safety measures, more lives would have been saved, is faulty logic for that

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