Timothy McVeigh has been executed for killing 168 people -- a number that seems to set some sort of unhappy record for human villainy. But the executives of Ford and Firestone continued to sell products they knew could kill, and did kill 185 people, though they have not been tried or even charged.

In terms of the number of American citizens knowingly killed over the past five years, executives at the Ford and Firestone Corporations recently surpassed Timothy McVeigh. Unlike McVeigh, these executives have not been punished for their actions. Indeed, neither corporation nor any of their culpable officers have been charged with any crime to date.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has recorded 185 deaths (McVeigh killed 168) and more than 700 injuries, amid the thousands of complaints involving rollover-prone Ford Explorers that crashed following sudden tread separation on factory-installed Firestone tires. This same deadly combination also was implicated in at least 48 deaths in Venezuela and the Middle East.

Last August, the tire manufacturer Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. announced a voluntary recall of 6.5 million tires, most of them original equipment on the Explorer. But at that time, Firestone had been replacing defective tires in 16 other countries for up to a year, while concealing the danger from U.S. citizens.

Officials at both Ford and Firestone received complaints as early as 1997 and knew of at least 35 deaths and 130 injuries before the federal government launched a probe early last year. How do we know? They were defending lawsuits from scores of survivors and the families of dead victims.

It is clear that executives at Ford and Firestone willfully and knowingly kept unsafe products on the market after they knew people would be killed -- more, ultimately than McVeigh killed with his bomb.

The two cases provide graphic illustration of a dual standard for accountability and justice in our society.

Nearly every candidate for public office talks tough on street, but all ignore the fact that as a society corporate crime costs us more than street crime in both dollars and lives lost. Corporate managers, such as those from Ford and Firestone, can literally kill with impunity.

In making a cost-benefit analysis, Ford and Firestone include as one potential expense the potential cost of civil lawsuits or fines for criminal convictions (such fines are tax-deductible as a cost of doing business) against the cost of recalls or other safety measures. Their job simply is to choose the most lucrative option.

This is clear in a 1973 memo Ford executives wrote about the Ford Pinto gas tank problem. Then-president Lee Iacocca and other Ford executives estimated that human life was worth $200,000 -- a number created by the NHTSA at the auto industry's urging -- and calculated the company would have to pay on average $67,000 for each incident involving severe burns.

Next they calculated the cost of recalling the Pintos and fixing the fuel tank against an estimated 180 deaths (actually, more than 500 were killed). The company's net return would be better if did not spend the $11 per auto (Ford's estimate) needed to make them safer.

There are ways to prevent corporations from killing people. First, we must remove the shield the makes corporate officers not liable for crimes committed on company time. Officials, like Ford CEO Jacques Nasser, Masatoshi Ono (who has since resigned as Firestone Inc.'s CEO) and their respective boards must be held accountable for fatalities, injuries, and illnesses caused by their actions.

But it would be foolish to think that serious corporate crime can be blamed on a few bad actors. Rather, we must change a system that permits cost/benefit analyses to take precedence over human health and life.

We can learn a great deal from our country's founders on this matter. They regularly exercised a corporate "death penalty" by revoking the charters of corporations whose products or actions harmed society, and refused to let individuals use the corporate form to hide personal accountability.

By their very nature, terrorist acts like the Oklahoma City bombing are often unpredictable and difficult to prevent. But the criminal actions in corporate boardrooms that kill many more Americans are neither. A smart cost-benefit analysis would direct us to focus more attention on these larger, preventable threats.

Let's protect ourselves by reinstating appropriate punishments for criminal corporations and those who run them.

PNS Commentator Jeff Milchen is founder of ReclaimDemocracy.org, Jonathan Power is a volunteer with the organization.

• Bay Area Youth Would Let Walker Off Easy
  Milan Gagnon, Jan 16
• In Economic Hard Times, a Living Wage Could Help
  Peter Phillips, Jan 16
• More Prosecutions Needed for 'Sins of the Fathers'
  Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Jan 15
• News Roundup -- Reading the Middle Eastern and South Asian Press
  Sandip Roy, Jan 14
• Bridges to the New California Media
  Compiled by Pueng Vongs, Jan 14
• Israel Tour Tries to Stem Tide of Jewish Assimilation
  Peter Cahn, Jan 11
• Women in India Want War
  Sarita Sarvate, Jan 11
• Saudis Shocked -- Bush Energy Move Terrifies Middle East
  Franz Schurmann, Jan 10
• Yen vs. Yuan -- China, Japan Square off in Global Economy
  Franz Schurmann, Jan 9
• American Muslims Struggle for the Soul of Islam
  Hasan Zillur Rahim, Jan 9