Toyota memo, other infamous memos and a video

As I reported over the weekend, now there are reports that there is a document out there that shows Toyota knew of the problems with its cars long before it did anything about it and that it hailed as a "win" its success in lobbying federal safety officials to limit a recall tied to sudden acceleration complaints to just 55,000 vehicles, saving the company $100 million. This piece of news prompted The PopTort blog to post a short comment reminding us of other similar "profits over safety" documents including the infamous "Pinto memo" where someone at Ford made calculations that concluded it would be cheaper for the company to do nothing to fix the defects in the Pinto even though it created the risks of death to consumers. The post also comments (and links to a copy of) a similar memo from GM in another case. Here is a video discussing some of the questions raised by the recently discovered document. It is short and doesn't really add much to the discussion but for whatever it is worth, here it is: