reductio ad absurdum.
if i do your brakes and dont test em before you put your butt in the seat, and ensure that those brakes will work every fucking time, IM RESPONSIBLE, just like if i let just a little poison drip onto my tomatoes, not a lot, just a little, and even one of my tomatoes has enough to make somebody sick, my ass is grass.
there are some risks we take (collisions due to other drivers carelessness or our own, bridge collapses, earthquakes, alien invasions etc...) other we expect to NOT have to take. it was generally presumed that if one purchased a car and were rear-ended at low speed (as little as 15 mph would do) the gas tank should not rupture splashing raw fuel into the passenger compartment, and onto the brake lights as a source of ignition. this was expected, ford failed to uphold those expectations and paid a heavy price for their failure, and even more for the hamfisted and clumsy manner in which they callously measured the deaths against a pile of money and found the money stacks just a little bit higher on the corpses than it does on the repair bills.
ford fucked up. for played itself. ford payed for their fuckup.
the system worked, and ford took a nice long turn in the spanking machine for their stupidity, case closed. some people wanted ford to pay harder, some people felt ford got hosed for doing what every company does. if ford had just tried a LITTLE harder they would have saved themselves a lot of bullshit.
later, when the F150 side mounted fuel tank flap started, CBS got longdonged for their shenanigans while ford was exonerated. shit worked that time too. assclowns got fucked when they played themselves.