[gnfargbl]

They thought they went with the cheaper option, but in fact they only considered the value of a life as estimated by the NHTSA ($0.2M). In reality, the damages that juries tended to assign for each needless loss of life turned out to be more like $100M.

If Ford had accounted for those punitive costs in their calculation, then the outcome of the cost/benefit calculation would have overwhelmingly favoured a fix. The real business problem was not the empathy-free approach, but poor mathematical modelling.

[meigwilym]

I think that deciding to go with the cheapest is an empathy-free approach, regardless if the maths were off.

[masklinn]

> They thought they went with the cheaper option, but in fact they only considered the value of a life as estimated by the NHTSA ($0.2M). In reality, the damages that juries tended to assign for each needless loss of life turned out to be more like $100M.

That was in large part due to the disgust over the report they had penned.

> If Ford had accounted for those punitive costs in their calculation, then the outcome of the cost/benefit calculation

Would still have been a cost/benefit calculation rather than a moral or ethical one, aka capitalistic greed.