Broadband Tech > Security > Security > Adobe apologizes for festering Flash crash bug

reply to lorennerol

Re: Adobe apologizes for festering Flash crash bug

quote:

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The NHTSA put pressure on Ford to recall the Pinto, motivated by public outcry and pressure from groups such as Ralph Nader's Center for Auto Safety. Initially the NHTSA did not feel there was sufficient evidence to demand a recall due to incidents of fire. The 27 deaths attributed to Pinto fires is the same number of deaths attributed to a transmission problem in the Pinto, which resulted in 180 total deaths in all Ford vehicles, and in 1974 the NHTSA ruled that the Pinto had no "recallable" problem.[14]

Nevertheless, in 1978 Ford initiated a recall providing a dealer installable "safety kit" that installed plastic protective material over the offending sharp objects, negating the risk of tank puncture.[15]

In 1981, an automobile accident that killed Lilly Gray and badly burned 13-year old Richard Grimshaw resulted in the court case Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.,[16] in which the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District upheld compensatory damages of $2.5 million and punitive damages of $3.5 million against Ford, partially because Ford had been aware of the design defects before production but had decided against changing the design.

Due to the alleged engineering, safety, and reliability problems, Time magazine included the Pinto on its list of the fifty worst cars of all time.[12]

However, a 1991 law review paper by Gary Schwartz[17] claimed the case against the Pinto was less clear-cut than commonly supposed. The number who died in Pinto rear-impact fires, according to Schwartz, was well below the hundreds cited in contemporary news reports and closer to the twenty-seven recorded by a limited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database. Given the Pinto's production figures (over 2 million built), this was not substantially worse than typical for the time. Schwartz argued that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, that its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles, and that the supposed "smoking gun" document that plaintiffs claimed showed Ford's callousness in designing the Pinto was actually a document based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations about the value of a human life rather than a document containing an assessment of Ford's potential tort liability.

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And then there's always Sumatra, »blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sum···dex.html, which is really horribly simple and will not do what many need, but I don't know if any PDF viewer is safe.