     Today, the National Society of Professional Engineers maintains and regularly updates a standard code of ethics for engineers to hold sacred. Within the code of ethics there are six fundamental canons. The first canon states, “Engineers, in the fulfillment of their professional duties, shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public” (Code of Ethics). Before college students can become professional engineers, they must learn and understand this canon. This canon is so important because engineers design products that, if not designed properly, can be deadly. However, companies also put pressure on engineers not only to make safe products but also to meet production deadlines and cost limitations. This puts engineers in an ethical quandary. The fourth canon of the engineering code states, “Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees” (Code of Ethics). Because of this, engineers are forced to make a decision. The engineer must decide if the hazard of the product has been minimized enough for the safety of the public. If the engineer feels the hazard has not been substantially addressed, then he or she must decide if this hazard needs to be made public.  This would mean the engineer would either violate the first canon by neglecting the public safety to uphold the fourth canon and protect the employer or violate the fourth canon by becoming a whistle-blower to protect the public. 

     The best major historical example of the dilemma engineers could face is the Ford Pinto and its fiery gas tank. The Ford Pinto was built to be light, fuel-efficient, and cheap to compete with other European sub-compact cars in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Ford also asked its engineers to develop the vehicle from conceptual design to market in 25 months. The reason this is important to the case is because at the time, this process standard took approximately 43 months (Dowie). This meant the engineers were tasked with speeding up the process by any means necessary. To fulfill the requirements, engineers mistakenly neglected certain safety design concepts. This led to a major design error. When the Pinto was rear ended by another vehicle driving at 20 mph or more, the fuel tank in the Pinto suffered a very real chance of being punctured, spewing gasoline into the front seats, becoming a fireball and killing the passengers inside. This probability of a fatal accident in the Pinto was significantly higher than other sub-compact cars because of this design (Dowie). In 1967 when engineers were designing and testing the Pinto, the vehicle met the safety standards required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). During this time, the NHTSA was re-writing safety standards due to technological advances. The Pinto would not meet the new incoming standards for rear-end collision testing. The engineers at Ford made management aware of this fact, but management fought to stall new standards in court (Dowie).  A lot of controversy in this example stems from a cost-benefit analysis performed by Ford that placed a dollar amount of $200,000 on a human life, but many have misconstrued Ford’s cost-benefit analysis, claiming that it shows that they were aware of the Pinto’s problems. The cost-benefit analysis was calculated based on all of Ford’s vehicles, not just the Pinto, involved in rear end collisions. The debate about this case is whether the engineers deserve to be blamed for the deaths, injuries, and damage caused by the faulty design within the Pinto and whether they had a moral obligation to become whistle-blowers. I argue Ford’s engineers do not deserve the blame in this case due to the unfair responsibilities of hazard judgement, the engineering code dilemma, and the lack of definitive conditions for whistle-blowing.  

     To find the blame in the case of the Ford Pinto, Richard T. De George, a distinguished professor of philosophy and co-director of the International Center for Ethics in Business at the University of Kansas wrote an article in 1981 at the height of Pinto Madness for Business & Professional Ethics Journal focused on the Ford Pinto case and the responsibility of the engineers at Ford. In the article, De George pointed to three major reasons to deflect blame and responsibility from the engineers. De George pointed to the consequences of betraying a company for safety’s sake, defined five conditions for an engineer to have a moral obligation to become a whistle-blower and defined an engineer’s job contrary to popular belief. This led him to place blame on the executives at Ford due to lack of action.

     De George stated, “Though engineers are members of a profession that holds public safety paramount, we cannot reasonably expect engineers to be willing to sacrifice their jobs each day for principle and to have a whistle ever by their sides ready to blow if their firm strays from what they perceive to be the morally right course of action” (De George 1). He says this to reference the difficulty in making the decision to become a whistle-blower. To be willing to turn in a company’s wrongdoing, an engineer must be willing to sacrifice his or her job.  The engineer betrays the trust of the company as well as bosses, colleagues, and friends. The decision to go public normally means an engineer is fired from the company. The engineer is not only fired but also is then figuratively branded an outcast for being disloyal (Bouville 580). Engineers who are known as disloyal employees have a much more difficult time finding jobs once they have been fired. Even if the engineer was justified in blowing the whistle, companies still see that decision as a betrayal of trust. De George makes this clear as his first main point why the Ford engineers were not responsible (De George 5).

     De George also defined five conditions for an engineer to be held morally responsible to go to the public with safety information and betray the employer. He showed that not all five conditions were met meaning the engineers were not morally responsible. The five conditions were the threat of harm to the public is substantial, the superiors had been made aware of the danger, all options to make the company aware of the danger had been exhausted, the engineer had documented evidence that could convince an outsider that the company’s policy was wrong, and the evidence was strong enough that bringing it to the public would prevent the potential hazard to the public (De George 6).  De George said while the first three conditions were met, the last two were not.  He said that tests for the Pinto met the standards of the time and while there were concerns, it was difficult to gain data that truly proved the Pinto’s hazard level. De George looked at the cost-benefit analysis and how it was flawed. While the analysis showed that Ford would come out on top based on the calculations and would save money instead of modifying the design, the analysis could not cover all factors such as pain and suffering, percent of increased safety risk, and how much reduced risk a redesign might save. He also mentioned an engineer who worked for Ford, publicly criticized the Pinto and was promptly let go. The whole point of De George’s five conditions for whistle-blowing was not only to show that the Ford engineers were not responsible, but also to set guidelines for future engineers.

     De George’s final point that was a central theme throughout his article was to define the job of an engineer and how it related to the moral responsibility.  He references the engineer’s job saying, “He is responsible for bringing the facts to the attention of those who need them to make decisions. But the input of engineers is only one of many factors that go to make up managerial decisions” (De George 5). De George’s point is an engineer may disagree with a decision management makes, but the engineer may not know all the factors that go into the decision.  While the engineer may have data proving the existence of a hazard, management may factor that into cost, public view, risk factors and many other scenarios. His point is the engineer’s duty is to present the information on a hazard and from there, it is management’s responsibility to figure out how to handle the hazard.  Therefore, De George blamed Ford’s management and removed the blame from the engineers.

     De George’s points to support the moral responsibility shift from engineering to management were rebuked by a few people. Hart T. Mankin, a lawyer and former judge wrote a rebuttal article De George’s paper. Mankin argued that De George’s viewpoint promoted selfishness for engineers. Engineers now could neglect moral principle to preserve employment. Mankin saw this as a violation of the engineer’s ethical code. Since the first canon asks to hold the public’s safety paramount, then it should take precedence over all. Mankin also argued that the example is more about ethics of a business or corporation and less with engineers. Engineers are asked to provide a service and beyond that, the engineer should have very little concern. Finally, Mankin questions De George’s call for change in businesses and organizations to protect engineers from ethical dilemmas like the Pinto case. He points out that engineers become coddled by doing this and are, therefore, not prepared to move up and make tougher decisions once in leadership positions. Mankin concludes that engineers face no more difficult ethical dilemmas than any other profession. De George simply beatified the responsibility of the engineers in the Ford Pinto case.

     Douglas Birsch, also wrote an article in response to De George.  Birsch said De George was too protective of employees within corporations and did not demand enough moral obligation from the engineers.  Birsch also said that using De George’s five conditions, the engineers actually did face a moral obligation to blow the whistle on Ford (Birsch 206-207).  Birsch thought that the fourth condition of documented evidence that would convince an outside observer was fulfilled. De George had said that there was dissention amongst the Ford engineers which meant the documented evidence could be disproved to an outside. Birsch argued that point was flawed because the Ford engineers were not unbiased outsiders. Birsch also agreed with Mankin saying that De George’s view encouraged selfishness from engineers because it was more beneficial to potential whistle blowers and their companies.  He said the focus should be instead on the benefit of the public and other employees who could be harmed.  Birsch then proposed a different approach.  Birsch cited Peter Singler’s Practical Ethics and Gene James’ “Whistle Blowing: Its Moral Justification,” to build his own code for engineers to follow in the future and should have followed in the Pinto case (Birsch 209). Birsch’s code says if an individual has the means to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing a similar morally significant value, then that person is morally obligated to prevent the issue. Using the new code, the engineers at Ford would have been morally obligated to make a change or go to the public because they were aware of the danger from the gas tank due to rear end testing and would only have to sacrifice loyalty to their company. Birsch argues that human rights hold the highest priority above company loyalty (Birsch 211).

     While both Mankin and Birsch argued that De George promoted selfish decision making from engineers by concerning themselves with the company backlash, the point remains that whistle-blowing is not an exact science. There have been countless examples throughout history where whistle-blowers were ostracized and fired such as Roger Boisjoly who told reporters about the design flaws the Challenger Space Shuttle had that caused it to blow up, killing seven people (Pennisi 1). All three agree that questioning the validity of a technical standard is a difficult ethical dilemma. I argue that since the Pinto met the standards of the time, the engineers cannot be held accountable because they would have had to believe those standards were wrong and then had to go against the national standards set by the NHTSA. Because there were questions about the standard, no engineer could have blown the whistle on Ford without fear of nothing being done to go with the fear of losing a job and becoming an outcast.  

     In Birsch’s argument, he points out that De George’s five conditions were fulfilled and the contentious fourth condition was fulfilled because the dissention was amongst Ford engineers and not unbiased parties regarding the documented evidence.  However, in a hypothetical situation where an engineer did blow the whistle and turn in documented evidence, another engineer within Ford who disagreed with the evidence could persuade the unbiased source to believe otherwise.  This would lead to questions about the legitimacy of the evidence and in court, the evidence could be thrown out.  Because of that point, the fourth condition is not fulfilled counter to Birsch’s argument.

     Finally, while both Mankin and Birsch may not have agreed on a few points De George made, they all three agreed that there is not an exact science to margin of safety.  This means a hazard can be minimized but there are no rules to tell when the hazard has been minimized enough. De George referenced a Mercedes-Benz 280 costing considerably more but also being safer.  To make the Pinto as safe as the Mercedes-Benz, it would cost a similar amount to manufacture.  This was not what Ford had asked of the engineers (De George 6).  Robert Baum also wrote about the difficulties that engineers as well as physicians face with deciding whether a standard set by another authority was acceptable within the individual’s own moral code.  He backed up the three by saying that no one person should be responsible for a standard and therefore, the engineers could not be held accountable (Baum 16). 

     The hazard caused by a poor design in the Ford Pinto has led ethical experts to debate who at Ford was responsible for the disaster and who should have prevented the failure. In Richard T. De George’s article, he removed blame from engineers by discussing consequences of whistle-blowing, defining five conditions needed to become morally obligated to blow the whistle on one’s company, and defining the responsibility of an engineer as an expert in one field but not the whole design. This led to De George concluding that management should be blamed and not Ford’s engineers. Both Hart T. Mankin and Douglas Birsch disagreed because they believed De George’s view allowed for engineers to be selfish to preserve their jobs. However, I disagree because the standards of the day in this case supported the engineers’ findings. Also, the engineers brought suggestions for safety improvements to the attention of management such as a $6.65 shield for the gas tank along with the rear end collision data. 

     This case is a perfect example of the moral dilemmas engineers can face today.  Whistle-blowing is a huge dilemma and the Ford engineers had to face this decision.  Harly Copp, a high-ranking Ford engineer actually came forward and blew the whistle to the public years before Ford was held responsible.  Unfortunately, Copp was fired and nothing was done solely because of his actions (De George 4).  It is a cautionary tale of what can happen because someone believes something is unsafe. I argue that when an engineer must make the decision to blow the whistle on his or her company, that person must be certain that the hazard they are bringing to the public’s view is such a danger to the public that it is worth losing everything. By believing this, an engineer can fervently fight to save the public from the hazard that he or she decides is a cause worth everything.
