Current Event: Ford to Pay

I had a humanities class we had to write a 'Current Event' for:

According to an Associated Press release, a woman won a case against Ford Motor Company in a suit filed because her Ford Explorer rolled over 4 ½ times when she swerved to avoid a metal object in the road. The plaintiff was awarded $369 million in punitive damages, which is one of the biggest personal-injury awards ever against an automaker.   Prior to this verdict, and within only a few days earlier, a San Diego County jury ordered Ford to pay $368.6 million dollars in total in punitive and compensatory damages to another woman and her husband, respectively, for damages in their rollover case.

This is a monumental case, and we may be seeing more of these types of awards in the near future, as manufacturers are being held accountable for design flaws in their consumer products. The woman offered to knock $100 million off the damage award if Ford corrected the design flaws in their Explorer that she says left her wheelchair-bound, while Ford insists that the Explorer is safe, and meets or exceeds all federal safety standards.

While Ford may believe and promote that their Explorer design passes standards, then there may be an issue with the failure rating system in general.  Products are produced and sold, some which have high failure ratings, thus endangering consumers, however, the numbers of instances are considered negligible.  When you are talking about failures resulting in a person’s death, how can death be considered negligible?  Should any product be allowed to be mass-produced that has a failure rating? And what are the guidelines?  What are the standards used to figure the percentages for each product that is considered acceptable, and who monitors these standard-makers?  That is the question.

If manufacturers of goods are left to decide the fate of their consumers, there may be several issues that develop.  An ethical dilemma may arise as to make a design change that costs the company $200,000 to make, and directly affects bottom line costs, or to let the project move forward and hope for the best case scenario, that no one will be injured or killed if a failure of the product occurs.  Money is usually the deciding factor instead of safety.