08/10/2026
August 10, 1978
Ford's Fatal Car
The Pinto is designed to be Ford's answer to popular import cars such as the Volkswagen Beetle and the Toyota Corolla. Instead of being economical, the small subcompact car proves to be Ford's most costly, not only in terms of dollars, but in terms of life.
On August 10, 1978, three Osceola, Indiana, teenage girls, eighteen and sixteen year-old-sisters Judy and Lynn Ulrich and their eighteen-year-old cousin Donna Ulrich, are killed when their 1973 Ford Pinto is involved in a rear-end collision.
Judy had parked the car on the shoulder of United States Highway 33 to retrieve the car's gas cap which had been inadvertently left on the top of the car. The cap had subsequently fallen onto the road and the girls’ Pinto is struck by a driver of a Chevrolet van swerving to avoid Judy. The van hits the parked Pinto and the gas tank explodes, instantly killing Lynn and Donna who are inside the car. Judy, outside the car, dies a day later, from her burns.
The incident is the most deadly in a series of Pinto accidents throughout the 1970s. The vehicle had been recalled, but the Ulrich family does not receive the notice until early in 1979, several months after the fatal crash.
The Ford Motor Company is indicted by a grand jury on three counts of reckless homicide. The company is accused of knowing the Pinto's gas tank is defective from its manufacturing inception in 1971, but does not change the design because of the cost.
Ford faces a maximum$30,000 fine under Indiana's 1978 reckless homicide statute. "Indiana v. Ford Motor Company" becomes a landmark case in product liability law, marking the first time a corporation faces criminal charges for a defective product, and, more notably, marking the first time a corporation is charged with a degree of murder.
A former head of the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), testifying on Ford's behalf, says the Pinto's design is no more or less safe than that of any other car in its class, that the fuel-tank design is the same as other subcompact cars, and that the company has done everything possible to comply with the recall once it had been enacted.
Ford is found not guilty of reckless homicide in 1980. Later that year, a civil suit is settled for $7,500 to each plaintiff.
Reaction to the verdict is mixed; some see it as a landmark for taking a corporation to task for their actions view the lawsuit as frivolous.
