[Earle]

Given the $millions it can cost (and has cost) car companies to knowingly put an unsafe design into production, I tend to think that financial liability alone, if not sincere concern for customer safety, prevents manufacturers from using the public as test guinea pigs.

I am slightly biased but I have a measure of "faith" in the professionalism of the typical engineer/designer in the automotive - or any transportation - industry from those few I've met and from their history. My experience is in the aerospace industry and I think there couldn't be a better group of serious, professional people in the world than those engineers tasked with designing a machine that will carry folks aloft where they can't simply walk away from a catastrophic design failure. There were the ocassional "hints" from management to speed up a project or refrain from "overly-conservative (i.e. too costly and too heavy)" design but the engineering department always had the final say in what was necessary in the safe, functional design of a part or a system - even if schedules or budgets were not met. You had pride in yourself and your work, and knew what the consequences of cutting corners were.

I can't speak personally about the automotive industry as a whole but I tend to generally trust engineers over any other department in any given company. Yes, honest mistakes are made but they are very conservative and do the absolute best job possible with the information and materials they have. Their only personal financial interest is in the fact that safe, quality designs sell. Dangerous, shoddy designs don't.

I want to think that early Ford engineers were not too different. They didn't intentionally design anything to be dangerous or to use the customer as a guinea pig.