“” Ford Pinto being one of the most famous.”
There is/was nothing unsafe about a Ford Pinto other than a smart talking swede shoe asshole attorney and a stupid jury!!!
The only tax dollars being used a San Onofre are that of the court system by you nuke freaks and the time they are consuming of the regulators.
i’m the one have to pay for the cost you assholes are creating with my electric bill.
SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am not anti nuke.
It is amazing that this claim gets thrown around anytime someone says that there are safety issues.
This plant has major issues.
Let me repeat, A SAFETY ENGINEER INSIDE SAYS THERE ARE MAJOR ISSUES.
Maybe he is wrong.
But the fact that he says there are major issues means that it should be investigated instead of burying your head in the sand and pretending they don’t exist.
The Pinto used the top of its gasoline tank as the floor in the hatch area. Also, in a rear end collision, the tank would hit the rear end at the third member ( the car instead of accordianing, actually bent like a banana) and either caused the tank to leak there (at least it's outside the car) or, it caused the tank to burst due to overpressure and it happened inside the car. Spraying the occupants of a car with fuel is probably bad in an accident without any ignition source. If there was a fire, I'm afraid the people would die before a fire truck could get there unless they could get out quickly and I've worked on many Pintos, not the strongest car on the planet and if rear ended, I could see the passengers doors crushed so they couldn't open.
Ford knew this and did actuarial calculations and figured it would be cheaper to pay off the victims than fix the problem.
Also, the doors were so close to the rear wheels, if you had to push one and your weren't aware of where the wheel was, you would end up with it running over your foot and not the way where your foot is flat and the tire rolls over it, I've had that happen a couple of times and you can barely feel it but in the Pinto, your foot was at an angle so it was possible to ride up your heel and force you down and doing a number on your tibia and fibula.
I think the fix was a piece of plastic between the tank and the third member. I don't know if they added a real floor to the hatch area.
I do believe the media WAY way overstated the problem. If they were to be believed, people were dying in droves in Pintos. I think the Pinto came out in '69 or '70 when auto rules were changing, like having a strong beam in the doors in case you got t-boned so it's possible, Ford and all the other manufacturers were getting new regs all the time which makes it hard to freeze a design.