Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Live: Back When Ford Pintos Were Flaming Deathtraps

Transcript

SYSK Live: Back When Ford Pintos Were Flaming Deathtraps · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. We've already made our big tour announcement for
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the year, but this is a little different because we
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: have added a show because Denver sold out, so we
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: have added a second show in Denver. Nice. Yeah, we're
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: going to be there on Wednesday. Then we added a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: show the day before the same place, Gothic Theater, Englewood, Colorado.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And you can go to s y s K live
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: dot com to get info and tickets for that show
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and all the rest of our shows to Chuck. That's right, Boston,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: April fourth, d C April five. St. Louis, May and Cleveland, Ohio.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Come out and see us. Welcome to Stuff you Should
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey what, Actually,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that yet, Chuck, because we're going to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: start the podcast later. This is like a pre thing,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: that's right, a pre welcome to this episode, a very
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: special episode of Stuff you should Know. That's right because
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: well it's live, and not only that, where are we live.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We are live in our beloved town of Atlanta's right, Hotlanta.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Well no you don't. No one calls it that everybody,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: but we we did this special show at the Buckhead
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Theater sold it out by the way, UM, and it
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: was a it was a benefit show. Yeah, it was
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: pretty great. We toured this topic in quite a few
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: cities last year. We had a lot of fun, and
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: we decided, actually, is your idea, give you full credit. Hey,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: let's make this Atlanta local show a benefit show and
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: give all of the dough to uh charities of our choice.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: So mine, Chuck was the National Down Syndrome Society UM,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: which is this great organization who advocate for people with
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Down syndrome obviously UM, but one of the things that
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the National Down Syndrome Society is dedicated to, especially right now,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: they have something called law Syndrome uh checkout law syndrome
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: dot org. And basically they're trying to get the laws
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: changed that make people with Down syndrome choose between pursuing
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: like a career and actually being able to support themselves
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: or uh not in staying at home and living with
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: their parents but still getting access to the really great
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: government Medicaid healthcare that they need. So UM, the n
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: d s S is saying they shouldn't have to choose,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: that we should want both of them, uh want them
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: to have both of them. So that's that's their push
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: right now. Uh, and you can go to n d
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: s S dot org and they have all sorts of
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: ways for you to donate and you can do that
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and feel great about yourself. It's great. And they actually
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: sent people from the society to the show and we
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: met them and they were just they were wonderful and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: what it was a great place to uh to pick
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: what a great way to donate your money people. Yeah,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: shout out to Colleen and Cale for coming to the show,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. And for my charity, I picked
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the Lifeline Animal Project right here in Atlanta. They are
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a sort of local grassroots see animal rescue organization. Uh.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: They have a few locations in Atlanta there to terrific.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: They have low costs spaying neuter programs. Obviously you can uh,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you can adopt, you can volunteer. Um. They're they're really
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: just great and they do it all um not for
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: fame or glory or money, but because Atlanta has a serious,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: serious problem with stray pets. And they're just the nicest people.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: So it's great that you guys are supporting them, and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it's uh, it's very worthy cause they are who Emily
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and I are charitable with every year on our own anyway,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and it was great to efficiently partner with them, uh
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and be able to combine with our regular donating and
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: write them a big old fat check thanks to Stuff
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you Should Know listeners. Yeah, so, so here's the thing.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: We donated of our proceeds from that show, and we
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: twisted every arm involved. Um, how stuff works, got T
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: shirts made up. Legendary super fan and friend Aaron Cooper
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: donated his time to design the T shirts. Uh. The
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: people who made the T shirts donated them for free.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: All the proceeds from the T shirts went to National
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Down Syndrome Society and Lifeline Animal Rescue. So what we're
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: trying to say now is we're releasing this episode and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: we are hoping that you are beloved Stuff you Should
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Know listeners, Well, take the time to go make a
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: donation yourself in exchange for this free live episode that
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: we're bringing you. That's right, And if you want to
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: just donate regular style, you can go to Lifeline Animal
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: dot org. That would be great, but they made it
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: super easy and set up a text donation campaign, so
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: all you have to do is text Lifeline whatever amount
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of money. So text Lifeline dollar sign five to five
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: zero one five, and you have just donated five bucks
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: or however much money you want to donate. It's really
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: really easy, right, And you can go to the n
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: d S S dot org website and you can donate there.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Um and they make it pretty easy on you. I
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: believe both donations are donations to both organizations are text deductible.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: It's got that bonus two. That's right. So one more
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: time for Lifeline, you can text to the number five,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: text the words Lifeline dollar sign and whatever number you
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: want to donate, and then that's n D S S
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: dot org and away with the show. Hey, welcome to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Jerry's not here, but we are with all these beautiful
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: people live at the Buckhead Theater in our own Atlanta
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: g A good wow. Hey yeah they are not too shabby. Everybody. Yeah,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: So let's start. Man, I feel great. So I feel great. Since, uh,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: since this is a live podcast and it's actually set
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a little further back in time, we thought we would
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: all get into the way back machine. So for those
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: of you who have seen us lie before, you know,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: The Way Back Machine is made up. It's not a
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: real thing, you but it does take a twinkle in
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: your eye and a heartful of magic to get into
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the way Back Machine. So I hope all of you
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: have that going on right now. That was my best
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Sarah Silverman impression. It's pretty good. Thanks. So we're all
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: on the way Back Machine, okay, and we're going back
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to Detroit, Michigan, back to like the mid sixties or
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: something like that. We'll say, yeah, back when people still
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: wanted to go to Detroit. I'm purpose sorry, ma'am. Yeah,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I told you. And we're gonna fly in does and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: we're very small and invisible by the way, So we're
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: gonna fly in over the shoulder of an up and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: coming auto executive with a beautiful head of hair named
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Lee I A Coca and Lee Lee. At the time,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: he was what you might call a young turk, up
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and coming, like ready to take on the world. Great
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: guy um and he had a lot of cred around
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the company that he worked at called Ford Motor Company's
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: tried his pre Chrysler right, and he had a lot
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: of cred because he had designed the Mustang right. It
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: was known as Lee's car even. Yeah. I mean if
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you if you are the guy in the lead of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the Ford Mustang project, then you've kind of bought your
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: ticket in the car industry. If you have a great car,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: do you make the car that Vanilla Ice will eventually love,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: You've done something quite right with your life, right. Did
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: he have a Mustang rolling in my five point oh
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: with the rag top down? That's a Mustang, buddy, is
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: it sure? I think it's even in the video. I've
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: never been more ashamed to not know the lyrics of
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a song. Yeah, because it's f and Vanilla Ice. So
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I don't feel like I should have known it. I
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: just feel like a stooge. Oh no, it's fine. Now
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: you've got a Wan shirt on, you probably should know
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: those lyrics. But I know I know that lyric. Yeah,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. It's my understanding, right everybody. Yeah, I
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: thought it was a Volkswagen Beetle. No. No, but that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: does come up starting now because Lee I Coca was
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: one of the few people in Detroit at the time
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: who realized that the American auto industry's lunch was being
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: eaten in the subcompact market, mainly because no American car
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: company was making subcompacts at the time. Right, we liked
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: our cars very large, like land yachts. Yeah, okay, so
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Li said, the Germans are eating our lunch with their
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: little Volkswagen Beetle Hitler's car. Look it up, I had
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: two Volkswagen Beetles. Those were two Hitler's cars. You supported
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Hitler in a way. My mom is over there, she
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: bought that car. She's going like uh. And then the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Toyota Corolla was also killing people, right, killing Detroit, I
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: should say, And so Lee said, we need to get
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: a car to market. But I'm not the president. There's
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: a man who is president. And what is his name, Chuck?
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I can't even remember, honestly, Oh no, I do remember.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: His name is Bunky Knudsen. If you're the president of
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: car company and your name is Bunky Knudson, you gotta
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: know you have a target on your back. Right, nobody's
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: gonna let that stand for very long, especially not Lee.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I a coca. Yeah. The only thing Bunky Ninson and
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: that year would have been president of is the the
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: super secret, super secret Treehouse Playboy magazine club led by
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Bunkie News, right or the local Union of the Guys
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: who sell those like monkeys that play the symbols on
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the street, you know, the wind up ones. Alright. So
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: regardless of that, Bunky Knutson was in charge and Leah
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Coca had his eight had sights set on that job.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: And so they settle things in the traditional way in
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the car industry at the time, which was arm wrestling. Serious.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: So Leaa Coca had this thing where um, and we
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: think this is probably how he rose to power. He
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: could rip the sleeve clean off of his shirt right
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: at the shoulder, right before an arm wrestling match, right.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: It's very intimidating, and he always kept his arms oiled.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Every morning he would oil him up and very gingerly
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: put the shirt on over him so the oil wouldn't
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: show too So it really had like a pronounced effect
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: when he tore his shirtslee of off and went like that.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: So when he did this, the Bunky nuts in and
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Bunky saw that oil bicep. He knew his time running
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: for a company had grown short. That's right, funky news,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and knew what time it was that was totally made up.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: You all realized the stunt silence threw me off a
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: little bit. It was back to the Treehouse for Bunky.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: So Leah Coca found himself in charge of Forward, and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: he said, we gotta get a subcompact going fast, dudes.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: project going. I'm even gonna give it a code name,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: which is really weird and sort of sman mark, kind
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of a Newts and move. But he named it Project Phoenix,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: which is very cute and a little ironic once you
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: know what this is about. And he said, I want
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a car I want on the market, and what twenty
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: four months? Yeah, and normally it took like forty three
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: months dating car from concept to production. I cocy said, no,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: twenty four so super fast, and it can't weigh more
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: than two thousand sounds and it can't cost a customer
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: more than two thousand dollars. And he totally should have
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: called it Project two thousand, so that would have been
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: a super cool name. In the early nineteen seventies, that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: car would go on to be known as the Ford Pinto.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: For those of you who aren't going, like a couple
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: of collaps, a couple of booze, a couple of groans,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: and a lot of like we're gonna fill the people
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: in on this, Okay. Yeah, So the deal with the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Ford Pinto was if you don't know, and you did
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: grow up in the seventies, um, it had a problem.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: We don't know a lot about cars, but we know
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: that the Ford Pinto had a problem. If you would
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: hit the Ford Pinto from the rear going very very slow,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes it would burst into a fiery ball. And that
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: is not a good thing for a car to do.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: It's asleep when you're still in the car. Has anyone
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: seen the movie Top Secret? Remember that one? There's there's
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a scene where Valkimer I think, is on a motorcycle.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: He's being chased by Germans, and um, he somehow out
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: maneuvers them and they swerve off the road and slam
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: on their brakes and almost come to a complete stop
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: right before hitting hitting a Pinto in the rear, but
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: don't quite make it. It makes that crystal thing sound
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and then boom they just blow up into flames. Right
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And this is in the eighties. This was like at
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: least ten years after the Pinto had this reputation. That's
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: not that far from the truth, actually, we found from
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: doing this research, so there's actually a lot of choice
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: quotes that we found a lot of people love taking
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: pot shots at the Pinto. Some have written some pretty
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: great stuff. Um, you want to take the first one? Yeah.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: The first one was from Popular Mechanics magazine and they said,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Argue dobably, the most dangerous fuel tank of all time
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was a rear mounted vessel installed on the seventy one
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: through seventies Ford Pinto. It's possibly the best example of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: what happens when poor engineering meets corporate negligence. Good quote,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I got one. There was this guy named Dr Leslie Ball.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: He was the chief safety officer for NASA's manned Space program.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So this guy new safety. Right. Um, he said that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the release to production of the Pinto was the most
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: reprehensible decision in the history of American engineering. So there's
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: a couple of things I wanted to try. A couple
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of things to note in this quote. One he said
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: was the most reprehensible decision, not one of the and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: he also qualifies it with American engineering, not automotive engineering.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: He's including like, um, easy bake ovens and other stuff
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: that have killed like millions people. You know, he's including
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: everything ever built basically easy, big governance or death traps too.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: So the Pinto, it was kind of an issue for Ford.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Is we're going to see But there's this one Tippitt
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: we ran acrost that we just love. There was a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: radio spot for the Pinto in the seventies and Ford
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: had to get there um their agency to get rid
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of it because it had the line the Pinto leaves
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: you with that warm feeling for real, this is this
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: is a fun one of research, alright. So again I
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: want to reiterate, we don't know anything about the design
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of cars. You know how to drive cars, and that's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: about where it ends. But we do know this. The
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: original design of the Pinto had a gas tank that
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: started six inches from the rear bumper. I know that's
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: not a good idea. If I was in Detroit, I
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: would have said, well, that's weird, and why would you
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: want to do that, because you know, accidents happen. No
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: one thought about it. No. That's made even worse by
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the fact that a car critic would later call that
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: bumper a little more than ornamentation, right, like cars supposed
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: to have a bumper, just put that thing that looks
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: like a bumper on it. Basically there was a later
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: improved version of the bumper on the Pinto that could
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: with stand a five impact. That was the improved version.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And again, this is all happening six inches away from
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the gas tank. That's that's just one side of the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: fuel tank. There's a whole other side, and it had
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: like its own issues. Basically, Yeah, there's there's something on
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a car called a differential. Uh. The mechanics say, we
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: don't know what that is, but um, I did some
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: research and here's what I'm gonna call it. It's the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: magic box that makes the car go room. It's pretty accurate.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: What's what's so funny is like we pride ourselves like
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: chasing down every tidbit of information when it comes to cars.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Were just like out no idea. Who would want to
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: hear a live podcast about a car. So this magic
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: box on the Ford Pinto had four protruding bolts facing
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the gas tank that uh see you're getting it now
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: that uh in court later on, and this would end
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: up in court that you see where this is going.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Lawyers would call them can openers, and we're just gonna
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: call them for this show, flaming death bolts. I wish
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: we had a sound effect or like a jingle like
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Flaming Death Bolts, And we should totally trademark Flaming Death Bolts,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I think so too, or at least that's a band name.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: I think we should at least call it out as
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: that a right do you hear that the Flamings Faults
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: behind us? That came out uh on the wrong night? So,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: like I said, there was there's a lot of good
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: quotes out there, but probably the best of them, the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: best came from this journalist named Mark Dowie who figures
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: big time into the story, and he probably got across
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the problem with the Pinto better than anybody. And if
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I may, okay, Mark Daway said, if you ran into
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: a Pinto you were following it over thirty miles, the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: right up to the back seat, and the tube bleeding
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: to the gas tank cap would be ripped away from
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the tank itself and gas would immediately begin squashing onto
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: the road around the car. Right the buckle. Gas tank
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: would be jammed up against the differential housing, which contained
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: four sharp protruding bolts, likely to gash holes in the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: tank and spill still more gas. Now, all you need
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: is a spark from a cigarette. And this is me
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: interjecting here. This is the seventies. So every single person
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: in every single car was smoking every single second of
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: every moment they were driving. There four lit cigarettes in
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: every car at all times, with windows up. Barring that
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: you could also get it from the ignition or scraping metal,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If you
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: gave that pin to a really good whack, say at
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: forty miles per hour, chances are excellent that it's doors
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: with jam and you would have to stand by and
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: watch its trap passengers burned to death. You're let's not
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: me saying this your additional what do you call that?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Pantomiming acting? Uh, it's it's in the pantomime trade fantastic
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: reading rainbow with Josh. Give LaVar Burton a run for
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: his money, all right, So there was one thirty mile
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: per hour crap dust with the pinto that found that
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: all thirteen gallons, all thirteen gallons uh spilled out in
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: less than sixty seconds. So we all drive here in
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Atlanta and you all pump gas. You know how fast
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: when you're pumping gas it's coming out and you're like,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: oh my god, that's so fast coming out. It's so
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: fast you can't pump or take a gas in sixty seconds.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: So the Pinto is spilling gas faster than you can
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: pump gas. Think about that next time you go to
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the gas station. Yeah, I think, thank God, I'm not
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: driving in early seventies Pinto. So the weird thing is this,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: despite the Pinto's reputation, whether it's from top secret, you
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: learned about it from your older brother, who knows where
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: you heard it from, but a lot most people, I
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: would even say, know of the Pinto is a flaming
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: death trap. It turns out in retrospect, the Pinto was
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: really not much worse than any other car and it's
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: class at the time, which is not to say that
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the Pinto wasn't a flaming death trap, but instead all
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: cars were flaming death traps. At the time. The idea
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of being safe if you got into a crash was
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: totally lost on Detroit at a time. It wasn't a thing.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: So we wondered, okay, well, how did the Pinto actually
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: get this reputation? And to answer that question, we have
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to go to the Great Periodical Room in the sky,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and we have to go back to the ninth we
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: all have to die. No, No, that's the great part
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: about it. You can go there alive. Usually when you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: say the great thing in the sky, that means you're
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: totally dead. It's just in the sky. Okay, alright, Great,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: we're going to the Great Periodical in the sky and
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: we're all living. All right, it's great. We're gonna go
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: back to the nineteen seventy seven section and we're going
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to find the nineteen seventies seven year for Mother Jones Magazine.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Has everyone ever heard of? Mother Jones Magazine is still
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: around today. One might characterize it as slightly left at
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: center maybe, and it was very much the same back
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: of the day. And in this in this September October
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: ninety seven issue of Mother Jones Magazine, there was an
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: article by Mark Dowie. That's right, it's called Pinto Madness.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You can still read this article today. It was one
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of the main sources we used. It's a great deep
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: dive if you want to read some more stuff about
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the Pinto but um. Mark Dowie was the quote you
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: read earlier, and he was a journalist there at the time,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: and uh, this is this is one reason you know.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: This is also the seventies when they released this article
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: in a print magazine, they had a press conference about it,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: which is adorable when you think about it, especially through
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: today's lens. So they even traveled. They went to Washington,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: d C. From San Francisco, held a big press conference
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: there on Capitol Hill about a magazine article, and they
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: invited Ralph Nader to attend, which, yeah, uh, if you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: don't know who Ralph Nader is, he is a great American.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: He uh it was a consumer crusader who cared really
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: about one thing in life, and that is making sure
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: that corporations didn't screw you over and they kept you safe.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: And he it's not like he got rich doing it.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Ralph Nader was a great, great dude, right. He like
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: lived like a hermit to show that it wasn't being
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: influenced by one side or the other. He had like
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a mattress on the floor of like a studio apartment.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I think he had a hot plate that he lived with. Ironically,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it's very dangerous I think about it. It was like
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: probably one of the safer hot places. But yeah, I
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: bet it was the best hot plate on the market,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: you think so, but he bought it with his own money,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: he did so any Ralph Nader was there, They got
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: everyone together and they had this big press conference in Washington,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: d C. And uh Dowie starts to poke around a
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: little bit and do a little more research for this article,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: and uh say, you know, I need to go to
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: these need to go to d O T and need
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: to go what was the other one called the an
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: h T S A once that stand for nationale man
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Correct some mouthful because
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of common words, but when you put them
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: together like that, it's tough. Uh So he went and
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: started doing some investigating and he found out that Ford
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: had been carrying out well they've been carrying out crash
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: test in secret. And when you're carrying out crash tests
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in secret, that's probably not a good thing, right. It
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: means that you didn't get the results you were hoping for,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: so you you suppressed the results you had. All the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: scientists murdered Lee, I coke its totally. Did He's like
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you see that He'd probably like it was like go
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: to sleep forever. But that was just to get the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: ball rolling, he had goons kill the rest of uh
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: and you then you filed the crash tests with the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: d O T that was the durable thing. So dawis
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: sitting there going through all these file cabinets, and you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: there's all these bureaucrats going like, oh God, why does
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: he keep saying, Eureka, here's the guy in there with
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a spy camera. And he figured out very very quickly
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that Ford was well aware of the notion that it's
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Pinto's were flaming death traps. Right, And from those forty
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: crash tests, he found that eleven of them, and this
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: is really important, eleven of those crash tests had been
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: carried out before the Pinto, the first one, had ever
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: rolled off of the production line. Right. He found in
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: these crash tests that every single one of those forty
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: crash tests, if it was a Pinto, that had not
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: been altered, meaning it was the same one that you
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: would buy it like the dealership, they lost gas and
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: an impact of twenty miles an hour over Not very good, right,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: not good at all. So three of these cars passed
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the test, and all three of them had been um
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: had been tweaked, for safety, like, these aren't the ones
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: that you would end up buying. They changed three of
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: them and they all three passed. Yet they still didn't
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: use it. And here are the three things they did.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: They one was a plastic baffle, a little square plastic
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: that costs one dollar and it weighed one pound and
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: it went between the flaming death bolts and the gas
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: sank solve the problem. Did not use it because remember
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: two thousand pounds two thousand dollars, which I don't know
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: what that is today. It's a two thousand pounds and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollars the pounds and change. Okay, gravity has
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: read relatively the same. The other thing they did, and
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: this ostensibly was a little heavier, they put a metal
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: plate to reinforce that ornamental bumper. In other words, they
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: gave it a bumper and that worked. And then they
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: finally the final thing they did was they I think
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: they line that was the inside of the outside of
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the gas tank, the inside of the gas to the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: inside of the gas sank with a rubber bladder and
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: that worked. Uh, but no one likes saying the word
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: bladder head forward. It's too gross. It works, but it's crody,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So we're getting out. The point is they had three
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: solutions before the ford was being rolled off the line, uh,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and they chose to ignore all three of them, right,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: big point here right um. And in addition to this
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: two thousand pounds two thousand dollar limitation that I Coca imposed,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: that radically shortened timeline also created a climate where really
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: really dangerous engineering decisions were being made. Right. Normally, when
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: you make a car, you sketch it out, um, somebody
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: makes a model of it, some dude like works it
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: in clay, You run it into like a couple of
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: walls or something like if you figure out how many
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: like light like a cigarette lighters are going to go
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: into it. There's a lot of thought put into it.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And then once all this stuff is pre production stuff,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: uh is done and you know what the car is
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: gonna look like, then you begin this process called tooling.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And tooling is where you make the machines that are
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: going to make the car that you're manufacturing. Right with
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the Pinto, they didn't do that. They started designing the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: car and at about the same time they started making
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the machines that we're going to make that car. Before
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: they even knew ultimately what the final design was going
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: to be. So by the time they figured out that
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: they had a really dangerous fuel tank on their hands,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: it was too late. The tooling was underway, two million
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: dollars worth of machines have been made, and Ford said, yeah,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: so when they discovered this, um, we have a couple
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of quotes here from actual engineers that worked there at
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the time, and they said, did anyone go to Lee
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I a coca and say, hey, we have a problem
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: on our hands with his gas tank? And this one
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: engineer from the Mother Jones article said hell no. But
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: if it was like so, we didn't say it like that,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: he went like, hell no. Right in my mind he went,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: hell no, no, uh, that person would have been fired.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Safety wasn't a popular subject around for it in those days,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: and with Lee it was taboo or taboo like if
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: you're a normal person, if you talk normally, mh to too, taboo, tattoo, taboo. Alright, deletrious,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that's a deep cut. Yeah, it was about twenty people
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: in here they got that one. That's all right, all right?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So I had Cook had a saying around for it
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: at the time, which was safety doesn't sell Uh. And
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: here's another quote from another engineer. Safety is in the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: issue trunk spaces. You have no idea how that the
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: competition is over trunk space. Do you realize that if
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: we put a safer gas tank in the Pinto, you
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: can only get one set of golf clubs in the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: trunk And that's a real quote. Yeah. And here's something
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: that you can do when you get home. You can
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: go and look up Ford Pinto ad and search Google
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: images or being images is out a thing being Yahoo, Yeah,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to be Google. Yeah, go to Netscape and
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: uh or if you're a paranoid type duck duck go
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: That even flew over my head. Uh, it's like they
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: don't like track or use cookies or anything like that.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so you're creep, I guess. I guess are
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: you stockpile weapons or something? Gotcha? So anyway, you can
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: look up Ford Pinto ads and they're all kinds of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: great ads from the old days. And there's one where
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: there's this, uh, well, there's this couple that um, I
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: guess is unpacking for like a camping trip from their Pinto.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't look like anywhere you would want to go. Camping.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: It's just kind of like a field for there's like
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: a ditch. It's kind of weird looking. And it says
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: this in the text, just split down the runabout's rear seat.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: The Runabout was one of the Pinto models. Open up
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the big back door, which we call a hatchback these days,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and the big back room makes packing easy back in
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: your golf clubs, those groceries and those big pieces of
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: luggage pack it all in. You make it sound really dirty.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: There's big room in your little Pinto. I'm the sick oh,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: because I'm using duck duck up. It's the sexiest ad
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: of the seventies, as read by me. I like old
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: ads in old magazines because like you can smell them afterward,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like if you go into
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Google images, the ads there, but not the smell. But
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you know what an old magazine smells like fantastic smell.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: You mean, like musty. What magazines are you reading? Just
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: any old magazine I pick up, just like alright, Jerry
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: gout that part, shre No, I'm not doing my shot yet,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and everybody calmed down. My niece left to go to bed.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: So are there any other kids here. All right, you
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: have a very deep voice, young boy. Right here. I'm
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: seven beer me screw. So everybody, I think we can
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: all agree this is going pretty well. You're not gonna
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: like this. That means that we need to put an
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: ad break in here. Calm down, we'll be right back
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: right after these messages. Alright, Chuck, we're over here listening
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: and we're doing great. Frankly, this is going really well.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I agreed. So before we go to add break, everyone,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: we just want to say, uh, here's a quick reminder.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Go to nd s S dot org to donate to
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the National Down Cynder Society, And Chuck, what's the number
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: for Lifeline. You can text to the number of five
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: zero one, text the word Lifeline, dollar sign and whatever
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: amount you want to give. All right, and now we'll
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: we're from our sponsor. M hm, hey everybody, we're back. Yeah,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: magical works. Yeah, thank you, sir. I am wearing me Andy's.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Oh you know what we should say this? That's a
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: freebee man. Well we'll cut this part out too, but uh,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I have to share this. We got. This is a
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: legit tangent like you know, like all of them, the
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: heavily scripted and rehearse tangents. You've heard him that. We
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: got an email yesterday. You saw it. I did where
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: a woman This is so weird. A woman wanted to
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: send a new pair of me Andy's to us for
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: us to autograph so she could frame the underwear for
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: her husband's Christmas gifts. Now that is a deep cut.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: That's a true fan. At least she wasn't like, and
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: you wear them first, Yeah, each of you pass it
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: off to the other one, then mail them back to me.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Both of those are like, oh yeah, send him in
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: totally do that. I sent smell like an old magazine,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: you know. Right when she got that in the mail? Ah, chuck,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: uh chuck, I said, I didn't what guys, what why
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: would you do that? No one else saw that. I
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: wish you probably edited this part out to jaire this
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: guy right here. So I send that email to our
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: head of sales though, and he was so delighted. He's like, oh,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to send this to me Andy's. They're
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you're autographing underwear. They're not gonna believe it. That's that's
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: like David Lee Roth level, except we're autographing me Andy's
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: for a fan, some dude, it's not David Lee Roth right,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: all right, everybody, we're back. I'm kind of thinking, sure
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: you do it again, though, because you just said that, Hey, everybody,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: we're back. I think I just stepped on you. And
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: stop laughing, everybody, we need to clean I said, stop laughing. Hey, everybody,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: we're back. Thanks for hanging there on. Thank you. That
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: was a really long appe. We know where we were. Now, Well,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I got it, I got it right, I got creepy
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: right before I know that, I know, all right, I
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: got you. Hey, everybody, we're back. Everyone's gonna be like,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: what the hell happened in Atlanta? That's good enough. We're
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: leaving that in so by now, everybody, you may be saying, Chuck, Josh, wtf,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: how how could this possibly be going on? How could
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Ford be doing this kind of stuff. We're gonna tell
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: you w TF. It turns out that back in the sixties,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: the American auto industry was like the last great unregulated
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: industry in the entire country. And the reason why was
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: because most Americans considered the auto industry the backbone of
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the American economy. Right, so everyone said we should probably
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: just let the auto industry decide what's best for it
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: and us it's consumers because we don't want to mess
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: with them. Yeah. Big corporations love to look out for
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: everyday Americans, all right, But at the time there was
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: a fatality rate a k A death rate on the
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: America's highways, reaching fifty thousand people a year. We did
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the math. That's a lot. That is a lot. Ralph
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Nader had a book called Unsafe at Any Speed That
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: was a big hit. Uh. He also had one called
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: hot Plates Unsafe at Any Temperature. So so quite as well.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Has anyone actually read Unsafe in Any Speed? Don't feel bad,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: We haven't either, Okay, good? So he released his book
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: in nine and it was basically like a chapter by
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: chapter really wonky detailed description of how your car was
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: ready and willing to murder you, right, not kill you,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: murder you. They were like chapters on like the steering
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: column it's going to impale you, or that dashboard it
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: ain't padded and your head's gonna open up like a
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: ripe candle op when it comes in contact with it, right, yeah.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: And the reason that this would happen for both instances
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: because there's no such thing as seatbelts right. So he
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: goes to the it was your right. And that's how
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: you knew, like a really dedicated mom in the in
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the sixties because she was missing an arm. That's like
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: her kid was all messed up at a DNA on
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: his head or whatever because it didn't quite work, because
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: her arm came clean off when they both went forward,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: but he was still alive. She didn't have an arm.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: It was a badge of honor back then. So Ralph
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Nader makes this makes writes this book, and it gets
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: released and it becomes like a bestseller almost immediately, and
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: it has so much of an impact that the next
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: year Congress passed the Highway Safety Act of Yeah, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: then this is another way you knew. It was a
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: day from way back in the day. Uh. The House
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and the Senate passed it unanimously. That's so coaint. They
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: all got together and said, well, this is what's good
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: for the American people. So this is our job to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: do this. And that went yeah, pretty sweet, pretty sweet time,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: pretty sweet. So they passed this thing. In the upshot
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: of it was that now the auto industry would be regulated.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: It was just the way it was gonna be okay,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and the auto industry said, okay, okay, fine, fine, but
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: what about this? Why don't we agree to use something
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: called a cost benefit analysis to decide if we actually
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: undertake any regulations you proposed? Deal? And the d O
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: T and n H T s A was like, well
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: no in the auto industry went like that, And the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: d O T was like, all right, fine, fine, we
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to arm wrestle over this one. Fine cost
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: benefit analysis for everybody. Yeah, So if you don't know
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: what a cost benefit analysis is, we call it the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: cruelest of all analyzes because it's basically just a math problem.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: You plug in numbers and you say, I plug in this,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I plug in this. Is it worth it to do this?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Which works great in a lot of circumstances if you're
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: talking about I don't know, like a like what's a
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: good example, or like, like if you're trying to figure
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: out whether to go with tire distributor A or tire distributor,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: be kind of easy, right exactly, But if you're talking
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: about replacing a fuel tank because it's killing people, it
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: gets a little sticky because one of the inputs on
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: those math problems has to be the value of a
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: human life. There's no getting around, no way around it. Right.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: So the nht s A said, well, I guess we
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: should go ahead and figure out how to quantify a
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: human life. They all went home and like kissed their
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: children and they came back to work. And what they
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: came up with the actually did it. There was a
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two document that said, everybody, this is the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: value of a human life and figured it out two
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand, seven hundred and twenty five dollars. And what
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: they did was, yeah, really, I thought mine was half that.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So what they did was they figured out um, the
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the average lifespan or the average age I guess of
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: a person who dies in a car wreck, and then
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: subtracted it from the average lifespan of of the Americans
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: at the at the time in the Iraq, such as UM,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and they came up with They came up with thirty
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: seven years, and those people who die in a car
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: wreck would have lived thirty seven more years. And then
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: they say, well, how much would those people make in
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: that time? And they said, well, two hundred thousand, seven
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: five dollars. The problem with this is is that it
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: really what they calculated was the cost to society and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: lost productivity if it's just wages, right, They didn't take
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: into account some very important stuff like the value that
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the individual places on his or her own life, or
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: whether their family wants him to come home after a
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: car wreck, stuff like that. But they came up with
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: this dollar amount and they said, there there. We'll get
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: better at it over time. But here's what it is.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: And it's a primitive step exactly again, the cruelest of
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: all analyzes. So Mark Dowie is sorting through all the
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: file cabinets of the d OT and the the National
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Highway Transportation Safety Administration. It's no faster to say it abbreviated.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I know, I would just mess it up though. Uh
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: So he's starting through all this stuff. He's going through
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: file cabinets. Everyone's worried, and he comes across the document
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: of memo called fatalities associated with crash and duced fuel
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: leakage and fires. And over the years people come to
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: think like, this is the smoking gun. This is pinto.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: It was about pinto fires from getting hit in the rear,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: and that's what it is. It really wasn't that. What
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: it was was it was about all cars in the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: United States and whether they caught on fire when they
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: rolled over. However, the one damning thing in this memo
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: was that Ford used that number, well almost that number
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: to quantify the value of a human life. But Ford
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: rounded down the rounded down the value of a human life,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: just you know, to make the math easier. Yeah, they
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: made a two d grand. They cut off the seven
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: five dollars, just made it a straight up two. Right.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: So they estimated like a hundred and eighty fatalities and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty injuries in car fires post collision
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: car fires every year in the US. And they said, well,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: that would cost society, uh, forty nine million dollars in
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: lost productivity. But if you want us to do this
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: eleven dollar per car safety improvement that would save those
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: lives and those injuries, well it cost us the auto
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: industry a hundred and thirteen million dollars, so I don't
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: have to do it, right, great, see it Racketball's head.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: That was kind of do you guys see fight Club?
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Remember Edward Norton's job. That was kind of what he
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: did right a little bit. Yeah, he had to kind
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of calculate whether or not it was worth taking a recall,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: and Ford, thanks to Dowie, had just been caught red
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: handed with one of these submitted in the public record. Alright,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: So part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act was was
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: something in all these bills. This gets a little wonky,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: but bear with me. They're all broken down into subcategories,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: and one of them was called Vehicle Safety Standard three
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: oh one. And three oh one was basically our government
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: getting together and saying, you know what, we feel like,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: you should be able to get hit from the rear
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: at like twenty miles an hour and not explode it
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: into a fiery ball. We've talked about it. We know
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna say, Detroit, but we've talked about we
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: feel very strongly about this. We feel less reasonable. Democrats
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: pushed for thirty, Republicans pushed for ten. They met in
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the middle at twenty. There are people from Cough County here.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: They are not happy with you right now. They are
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: going to let us know via email after this show,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: angry that the way you feel about life. So they
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: settled in twenty miles an hour and that was Safety
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Standard three oh one. But here's the here's the rub
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: for the Ford and the Pinto is they had a
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: problem on their hands. They knew they couldn't understand twenty
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: miles an hour. They could barely withstand five. So this
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: would have meant a complete redesign on the Pinto. So
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: they come up with a plan basically too shall we
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: say delay the process? Yeah, I kill it, killed it,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: think killed it standard three oh one. I hate it.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: And they were happy because they didn't have to kill
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: a human right for once. So oh yeah, I didn't
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: even mean to say that. But so here's what they did.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: They got the attorneys on the case and they said,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: here's what you'll do. You're gonna you're gonna file these
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: arguments on the last day that you can file an argument,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna get all this data together and you're
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: gonna shove it in their face and say here's an argument.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: D o t uh. And now you gotta look through
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: all the stuff and have to satisfy that argument. So
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: they may not have even cared if the argument held
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: up or not. The point was they just wanted to
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: delay things so they could keep selling the very dangerous Pinto.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: So they did this, and they didn't they didn't file
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: them concurrently all at once, which is sort of what
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you usually do in the law in court. Uh, they
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: would file one, they would go look for them, and
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: this holds water, it doesn't. They go great, They wait
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: till the next deadline and file another one, and all
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, they have delayed this process for nine years.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Nine years. They started arguing against it in nineteen and
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: standard three oh one went into effect in nineteen seventies seven. Right, yeah,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: boom so um. There's kind of like a silver lining
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: to this whole thing. And that Ford's objections actually forced
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to study the problem
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: of car fires to answer Fords the objections and say, no, actually,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: you're wrong, they're kind of a problem. Yeah. They were
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: giving them reams of data and then they went, oh,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: we just gave them reads. Right, But the n h
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: t s A also had to like contract with people
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: to study this stuff. And what they were finding was
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: that car fires in America were way way more of
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: a problem than even Ford I think realized at the time.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: They turned up some stats like four hundred thousand cars
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: were burning up on the American Highway every year, burning
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: more than three thousand people at death. Is that high?
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Four hundred thousand cars. Yeah, maybe it's a little high.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but this is what they turned up.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: It sounds high. Here's a here's one uh of all
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: calls to all fire departments in the United States, and
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixes were cars on fire. And that nuts
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: just the last time, you guys, just car on fire.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: This would be like an like you would see one
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: in a couple of miles later, there's another one. Well,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and yeah, and this was people didn't have cell phones,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: so you would have to see a car on fire,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: have a dime in your pocket, be near enough to
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: a payphone to report it, right, And that was and
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: have made the judgment that there was a chance that
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the person was going to make it in the time
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: that you went to the pay phone. You know, there's
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of factors here seems high. Like if you
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: had a Christmas parade in your town, there's a pretty
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: good chance a couple of those cars were just gonna
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: catch fire in the middle of the parade. This is insane.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: And this is what the nhc s A was finding
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: from studying this problem. There's a University of Miami study.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: They found that rear end impact fires were quote a
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: clear and present hazard to all Pinto owners. That was
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the cane saying that. All right, so wait, wait, wait,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: we're going to take another end brake. Everybody, We'll be
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: right back. Don't get up, we'll be right back right
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: after these messages. Alright, Chuck, last ad break, it's going
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: pretty well. Just a hot crowd. You got that straight, buddy.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And before we go to ad break, we just wanted
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: to remind you again go to n DSS dot org
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to donate to the National Down Syndrome Society and Chuck,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: that's right. Or you can text to the number five
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: zero one text lifeline dollar sign and the amount you
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: want to give. And it's that easy. Yeah, And it
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't need to be an ORR proposition. It could be
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: an and proposition to Speaking of propositions, here's a word
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: from our sponsor. M hm, hey, everybody, we're back. It's
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: a lot better live. Huh. They get it now. So
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the original draft of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act had
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: uh had a part that provided it was very controversial.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: It provided for criminal sanctions, criminal sanctions against executives of
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: auto companies and these uh, well, let's be honest, these
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: white dudes that were executives that these auto companies said, well,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I I think I don't think you really mean that, right,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: but that means we could go to prison, you understand,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I like, I think we should. Uh, we have some
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: lobbyists on the case. And so they they put the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: lobbyists on the case and they did get that lobbied
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: out of the Safety Act. Unfortunately. Yeah, I say unfortunately,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: that's me talking, and well, you're speaking for both of us, buddy, um.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: And they end up with like five or ten thousand
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: dollars yea in seven money, which today translates to like
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: forty grant. So if you were an auto executive who
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: knowingly put a dangerous car out on the American market,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: you could facifying a forty dollars And from what we understand,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: that's like once one time. Fine, that was it. So
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: it would be up to the media and the courts
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: to force forward to do something about It's Pinto and
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: and boy did they ever The drumbeats started, isn't that right? Yeah?
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: It started with Dowie, right, Like Mark Dowie gets this
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: gets a lot of credit for um for the Pinto article,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: and definitely he definitely had a big impact, but he
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: gets some undo credit for getting Standard three oh one
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: to come into effect because it came into effect pretty
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: shortly after the Pinto madness article came out. It turns
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: out later research turned up that UM, the n h
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: T s A had said, Ford were so sick of
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: you arguing against standard three oh one. How long will
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: it take for you guys to get your cars up
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: to standard three oh one level, which again is a
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: twenty mile an hour rear impact that doesn't lead to
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: fuel loss, and for its like, I don't know, it
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: seems like a big job, right, uh four years And
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the n h T s A was like, you know,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: it took you two years to design the car from scratch, right,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, this is huge, massive improvements to make
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: it safe. So four years. So the NHTSA said, fine, fine,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: in seven it'll come into effect. So it was just coincidence.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: But Dawi's article did have a big impact in the
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: way of like shaping public opinion. Yeah, for sure. So
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: what happens is they're they're starting to be uh some
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: lawsuits people that are getting burned alive in Pinto's and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: other cars, UM say well maybe maybe we could see
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: somebody and that is that a ducka duck in the house. Well, okay,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: let's get back on tracks. Back on track works, doesn't it.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: You're all charmed? Thank you for can that one for us?
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Chuck Jerry cut cut that art? Alright? So, uh, why
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: that's delicious, it's good. Yeah, bullet bullet brand bourbon. It's
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: called buzz marketing everyone. They don't even pay us for
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: that yet. So uh. There are these people that have
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: this job where they recreate accidents, um for sometimes it's
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: for court, for attorneys for the state, sometimes it's for
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: insurance companies. But they recreate these accidents kind of show
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: what went down. And some of them started to say,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and again it was a radical notion, started to say,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think that if you get in
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: a car wreck, you maybe should be able to live
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: through it. It's a radical idea, but like maybe they
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: should make cars safer. Yeah, they're never going back to
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: San Diego, hippie. Well the notion from from America. Everyone
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: sort of agreed to this thing where like, if you
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: get in the car wreck and die like you got
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: in the car wreck, it's your fault. It was the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: driver's fault. It's a driver's fault. You can't make cars
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: safer in the case of an accident. It seems weird
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: now because it's all we think about as auto safety,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: but it was just not on the radar. Lea Coca
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: was not the only one, but that was thanks to Detroit,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: like saying, it's your fault, you're a dummy. But everyone
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: agreed to it. Everyone But in in Detroit's defense, at
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: the time, everybody was wrong while they were driving. It's
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: way more than today, so they kind of had a point.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: But still they could still make the cars safer and
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: should have even even more back then. Yeah, for sure.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: So these I don't know what we call them, accident recreationists,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: reconstruction reconstructionists. Recreationists are the Civil War dudes? Does anyone
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: here do that? Any Civil War reenactors. There's three who
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: are just sitting there like that's right now, all right?
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Quicksidebar Emily and I went hiking at you guys ever
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: go to Sweetwater State Park see local show. Emily remember this.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: We went hiking and Sweetwater and there were some Civil
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: War reenactors, but it wasn't like what I know about
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Civil war reenactors is is that they throw a big
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: battle party or whatever it's called, and they act like
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: it's a big war and they go bang you die
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: or don't die and bang bang, and then that's sort of,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: uh what happens. I have no idea what they do,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: but it's a big show, like on a field, like
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: I went to one when I was a kid. I
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: remember that. But these dudes were just hanging out in
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: the woods at Sweet Quarter State Park. They were like
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: they had a fire going and it was it was
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: like three or four people. It was a couple of
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: dudes and a couple of ladies in in their outfits
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: and they were cooking like I guess, like a squirrel
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: on a spit. That's Huckaby style. It was no organized thing,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: and I was just hiking buy it was like a
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: year ago. I was like, well, that's weird. Did you
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: guys just like back slowly into the way, don't make
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: eye contacted. I guess I approved because it wasn't war,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: so that's kind of cool. It was they were prepping
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: for war, so okay, they were gathering their strength from squirrels.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Feint very strange. Don't go to Sweetwaters by the way,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: don't go there. No, not after that, Okay, I didn't know.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: If there's something else, like there's a lot of abandoned
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: tires in the ravine or something. All right, cut that
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: cut that whole story. I don't know. I think it
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: was a good story. I think we should keep it. Jerry,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: is she dead? The great period? This guy? All right,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: so this recreationists, That's where I was. You are saying, uh,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: maybe you should sue the car company, like because cars
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: should be safer, And people went, oh, well, that's not
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: a bad idea. Yeah, because every revolutionary idea these guys
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: were saying. With the pentol in particular, I'm starting to
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: notice a lot of charred bodies that are otherwise in
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: perfect shape look great aside from the charred part, right,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Like they don't have any contusions, they don't have any
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: broken bones. So like these accidents are happening at really
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: low speed. Maybe it's actually a design flaw with Ford.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: And so the lawyers are like, that sounds great, and
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: they started circling the courthouses like the flying Monkeys and
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz and dropping lawsuits down on the
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Ford's head. And at first forwards like bring it. We're forward.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: You know, juries are made up of like upstanding registered voters, Right,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be just fine. And Ford one a couple
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: at first, and then they started losing them. Um and
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Ford was still kind of like, we're still we're still
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: taking the jury trial on. But the whole thing turned
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: earned on this one trial in ninety seven in Orange County, California,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Um and Ford lost big time actually in a Pinto case. Yeah,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: they lost, and this was in seventy seven. They lost
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty five million dollars and damages to
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: a boy named he's thirteen years old, Richard Grimshaw was
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: it's very sad. He's burned very badly and the driver
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: of the car died and a hundred million bucks back.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a lot of money now, but back then,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: it's a ton of money. And it's what they call,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: you've heard of like a symbolic award, where they'll just
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: hit a company with a ton of ton of money
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: and it later gets reduced. But all they care about
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: is that the media knows that they got hit with
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: this ton of money. That was sort of the case here.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: It got reduced to what three and a half million bucks.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Just still it's still pretty still a lot of money
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: back then, of course. Um, but that initial figure like
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: really made a point and sent shock waves through the
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: auto industry, and so Ford changed its tactics. They're like, okay,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: well maybe we'll start settling. And we got another quote
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: and Chuck reads it way better than me, So if
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: you don't mind, Yeah, this was an attorney for Ford. Um,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: and I'll read it in the voice of Lionel Hunts
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: of the Simpsons, the great Phil Hartman. Uh, here we go.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: We'll never go to a jury again. Not in a
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: fire case. Jerry is a just too sentimental. They see
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: those charred remains and forget the evidence. No, sir, will settle.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks for that. That is a He wasn't overheard saying that, right.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: A TV reporter stuck up a microphone in his face
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and he said that that was his quote. That like
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Amazon Alexa didn't overhear him saying that to his wife
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: at home later exactly. So Ford was like, Okay, kill
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: that guy, that lawyer. We're gonna start settling. And so
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: they did start settling. There's some benefits to settling, well,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: there's some drawbacks to One is that it tells the
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: entire world that you know, your case is terrible, but
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: it says, um, while there's gonna be lower payouts to
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: the lawyers, um, and there's going to be lower payouts
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: to the defendants. And it also cuts down on discovery.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: So discovery, if you go to jury, the plaintiff, the
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: person filing the case, has of legal access to any
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: in all documents that you have that proved their case
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: against you. Right, So with all these jury trials, there
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: was this steady trickle or flow even of Yeah, it
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: wasn't even a trickle. It was a flow of damning
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: evidence coming out of Ford going into the hands of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: lawyers who were happily turning it around and handing it
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to the media who were reporting on this stuff, which
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: was getting the public just good. And and that drum
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: that Chuck was talking about it started to really pick up,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and like people were really looking at Ford like in
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: this weird, like unsettling, non blinky way. You know, everyone
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: took their shirts off and they put like war paint on,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: and just forbus starting to get a little nervous. They
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: were like like us America said you so that got
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: a little weird, Yeah, thank you. Thank you, buddy. You
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: get a shirt that bordered on uh performance art, did it?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: I think had I taken my shirt off and would
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: have been perfect, Oh my god, do it out of
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: your mind, cheer until blood comes out of your mouths.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: And I still wouldn't take my shirt off. There's nothing
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: you can do to make me take my shirt. Actually,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: I would probably be like my off, which would be
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, that does feel good. Though, now we've reached
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: David Lee roth level. I wish I had another shot.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, alright, so shy. That's just having common values.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Not taking your shirt off in public when people tell
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: you too. That's normal stuff. Man, you well you did good.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Is one of thank you Jerry cut out the last
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: shame on all of you. Hometown show. Alright. So finally
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: in ninety seven, UH safety three o one came into effect.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: What we talked about, would you should be able to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: hit a car from twenty miles an not be a
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: flaming death ball And the nineteen seventy seven new Pinto
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: debuted with a very brand new safety feature that one
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: dollar one pound piece of plastic in between the flaming
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: death bolts and the gast egg that they've known since
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: night would save lives. Boom, thank you, so um lea Coca.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: By this time in Ford in general were scared to
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: death of the PR crisis that had been growing and growing,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and the whole thing again was started by Dowie's article.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Not only did he get the Mother Jones readership involved,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: he really kind of awakened the mainstream media to the things.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: So everybody was reporting on this. People were suing Ford.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: It was a huge, big problem, and I had Coca
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: told everybody clam up. That's actually a direct quote from
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: his book, his book. I used to think in a
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: happier time that was called straight talk. But that's a
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Dolly Parton movie. It's called talking Straight. I gotta say,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: you sent me this initial Josh said this wrote this show,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: and he sent it and he said straight talk. And
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: I was like that Dolly Parton play les. It's still
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: it's still said that. I never corrected it. I never
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: saw the movie that would be great. You never saw
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: a straight talk. I don't know. It's shamed. Is that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: gonna be your movie? Crush pick? Oh? Maybe that's buzz marketing.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Now I have to do with no, no, no no.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was called talking straight in the end,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I think straight talk might have been the working title. Okay,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: but then he says, like we were so afraid of um,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: the this PR crisis bankrupting forward. If you could imagine
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: that that they just said, no one talked, don't talk
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: to anybody, just clam up. And they thought that if
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: somebody said something the wrong way and like there was
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: a scary turn of phrase or something that I was
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: just taking the wrong way, it would be seen as
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: an admition of guilt. The problem was to the public
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: um that the fact that they weren't talking was seen
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: as an admission of guilt more than anything. Yeah, it
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: was a big deal. Like sixty Minutes was literally knocking
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: at the door, like Morally safer? Was it Ford knocking
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: at the door And he said, I'm Morley Safer and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: if you're not intimidated, now, I got ed Bradley with me.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: We've sent two of our best dudes, so you should
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: be pretty worried. And Ford was crouched down under their
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: window there. It's so funny, is I used to love
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: sixty minutes but when when I was like thirteen, it's
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: so such a weird show to watch as a kid.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: It's sophisticated. I was not sophisticated. Apparently you were. That
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: was not I don't know what I like a little right,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: And then after that you're just like all right, I'll
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: turn the channel. Well. And and also another thing about
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: I think it came on after either like the Wonderful
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: World of Disney or that was great or Wold Kingdom
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: or something, and I don't know what that is, sir.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: That was like Full House was on that that was
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: like the nineties. You're way off. Yeah, I'm so old.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Do you see this? Beard? So much gray? Like the
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: Davy Crockett Story Hour? Was that one? Well, I'm not
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: that old night writer. That was a good that had
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: a good theme song that this is devolved into like
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: shout out your favorite old thing. And we're almost done.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody called them all right, we're hit in the end.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: So uh. In June, um they started their own recall
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: proceedings in sixty minutes, was on the on the door,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: they're knocking, they're knocking, and Ford says, you know what,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: We're gonna undertake a voluntary recall if anyone believe that,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: they'll they'll make us look so good of one point four.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if we mentioned the Pinto was
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: a big, big seller, Like, despite all this, it was
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: a super super popular car. It was like the best
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: selling subcompact of the seventies. It very much was. It
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: was It's Winona Writer's car and Stranger Things too. Oh yeah,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. I don't was it her car
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: and Stranger Things? Why? I don't remember, but they featured
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: the Pinto and Stranger Things too, night Rider spoiler thanks
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: a lot, right now, I know what car she drives,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: all right, So they undertake a one point four million
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: car recall on just the Pencil alone, but also another
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: car they had, right, the Mercury Bobcat, which was it's
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: like more luxurious but equally deadly twin. And we're not
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: quite sure, like what made it so luxurious. Maybe it
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: had like an onboard like blow dryer brush to like
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: feather your hair with while you're going home. What we're
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the back You sit in the back seat and they
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: just have the thing from the hair place. They just
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: lowers over your That is the pinnacle of luxury that
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: we can think of for the god the seventies. Alright.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: The bad news is, though this is very sad to
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: stop laughing, between the time four decided to undergo that
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: recall in June and the time it told consumers like
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: internally and they said, all right June, we'll do this
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: September we announced it to the public. In those few months, uh,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: there was a very very sad crash rear rear rear
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: end you need another shot, No, a rear end impact
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: where uh where some young women died. And there was
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: a prosecutor in Indiana named Michael Constantino that said, uh,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: you know what, I've had it, I've done, I know
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: the deal. I'm gonna bring these dudes on trial for murder. Murder,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Like he filed criminal homicide charges against the executives that
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Ford for that crash. Yeah, very big deal. Yeah so um,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: And that it wasn't just like a flash in the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: pan like this trial actually or these charges went to trial.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: It was over like three years. And over the three years,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: everybody was reporting on Ford executives on trial for murder
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: every day and they the charges got dismissed, but the
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: public criminalizing of Ford's executives were it was huge. Like
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: it was a bad PR crisis before that. It couldn't
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: get worse than that your executives on trial for murder, right, yeah,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: for sure. So, um, despite all this, despite the fact
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: that the Pinto wasn't flaming death trapped to a certain extent,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: when you look at the numbers today and when you
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: look at the real statistics, uh, it was not much
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: worse and sometimes better than other cars on the market
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: at the time that would kill you from fire, like
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: the Vega or the Gremlin. They would kill you, right,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: So we tried to figure out and actually, it turns
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: out there was this article in Harvard Law Review where
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: this guy said, Um, I've done the math. I've actually
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: figured it out, and here's the number I came up with.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: It was seven twenty seven people is probably the number
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: of people who died in low speed rear collision impact
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: fires in Pintos. And it's over like ten years, like
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: millions of cars. Twenty seven it's not that bad, actually, right, Um,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: it was way less than I think Mother Jones said
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: like five hundred and nine hundred. And this is so
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Mother Jones. They said that was a conservative estimate that
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: we just made up. And then I think sixty minutes,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: Chuck's beloved sixty minutes said, like, thousands of people had
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: died in Pinto's no one knew, so they were just
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: making up numbers. But this article said, no, it's probably
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: twenty seven actually exactly. So uh. In the end, we
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: look back and the Pinto was even though it could
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: have been a flaming death trap, what it really was
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: was a very bad victim of pr Yeah, you know, yep. So,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: like the problem was is that the way you could
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: die in a Pinto was just too bad to be
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: allowed to continue. Right. The idea that, like, if you've
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: got an a rear end collision and the passenger compartment
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: filled up with gas, that's bad enough. But the idea
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: that it could happen at such a low speed that
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: you would still be conscious when you caught fire and
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: burned to death. The American public said, dope, that can't happen.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, and so thanks to Dowie's article, um
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: and sixty minutes, eventually the Pinto was basically laid to
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: waste as far as the American public was concerned, and
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: still has a bad reputation today. That's right. In the end,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: the pins it took the real impact, but not not
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: in the good way, not in the good way, in
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: every kind of bad. You know, that's true. I never
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: thought about that. Yeah. Uh so Indian Mr Lee I A.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: Coca would go on to write his legend with the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: christ Or Corporation by bringing them back from um kind
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: of the brink of bankruptcy into huge success in the
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: nineties and the eighties. And uh he was named I
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: think by Portfolio magazine as the eighteenth gradest CEO of
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: all time, just ahead of Oprah, which is both yes
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Team Oprah up here. I wrote a couple of books,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: wrote that biography that Josh talked about that Dolly Parton
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: did not star in, and another call where how have
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: all the Leaders Gone? And Mr Iacca is still alive today,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: The Rifled Age of ninety two and bel Air neighborhood
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, California, where there is nary a Pinto
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: to be found. That's right, and that is the story
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: of the Ford Pinto. Yeah. Thanks, ye, well that one
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: pretty well, chuck. Yeah. If you want to get in
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: touch with us for any reason, you can tweet to
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: us at s Y s K podcast. I'm at Josh
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: um Clark and I also have a website called are
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: You Series Clark dot com. Chuck's on Facebook at Charles W.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, or at Stuff you Should Know. UH. You
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: can email us and Jerry to stuff podcast at how
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: stiff Works dot com and has always joined us at
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Home on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: it how staff works dot com. M