in reply to Re^3: Projects where people can die
in thread Projects where people can die

A corporation that knowingly fails to employ proper engineering tactics could end up with it's entire staff, from the CEO down to the poor schmuck who coded the thing, up on a huge string of both civil and criminal charges. It's simply not acceptable to knowingly let civillians die. That's not something corporations are allowed to do.

Thats bullshit. Everyday, designs are made, in which the designers "KNOW" that so many people will die due to it. It's called cost-benefit analysis, and "externalizing corporate costs". Some examples:

"highway design" where it is decided that saving 30,000 lives is not worth the price of concrete lane barriers.

"chemical industry" where it is known that x number of random cancers will be caused by the widespread use of the new whizbang product.

"auto industry" where it is known that in reality, the streets are being flooded with carcinogenic compunds from tailpipes, resulting in untold cases of disease and death.

In all these cases, a price is put on human life by the corporations, and the government agency that oversees it.

Even in "high-profile areas" like airplane crashes, they limit liability and let the designers get away with (murder) negligent man-slaughter , in order to maintain profits. The most obvious example I recall, is the case of the faulty insulation in the cockpits, which caused that plane to go down off Nova Scotia a few years ago. Once the fault was determined, they DID NOT order the planes grounded, nor repairs made. They decided to risk the lives of the passengers, until the planes went out of service due to age. (Another example is the "nitrogen-fueltank-flushing" which would prevent Flight800 type disasters. They decided it isn't worth the price, yet they know it will happen again.)

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

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Re^5: Projects where people can die
by swampyankee (Parson) on Sep 08, 2006 at 14:37 UTC

    "Murder" is a strong and, I think, inappropriate word.

    You are, of course, correct in the statement that a cost is applied to human life. Ford did this in the case of the Pinto fuel tank; the airlines do this whenever a safety related grounding is proposed, the EPA and OSHA (US government agency which is supposed to, but largely doesn't, enforce workplace safety regulations) do this for every proposed rule.

    Safety costs serious money, and some of the events being regulated (or not regulated) for are extremely rare. No one is terribly worried about the next Chicxulub, because its likelihood in the next few centuries is quite low and its prevention would cost billions. People get crazy about SARS or West Nile, but continue to smoke. Go figure.

    emc

    At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.

    —Igor Sikorsky, reported in AOPA Pilot magazine February 2003.
[reply]
      Right, I will change "murder" to "negligent man-slaughter".
      I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum
[reply]

        Thank you.

        emc

        At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.

        —Igor Sikorsky, reported in AOPA Pilot magazine February 2003.
[reply]

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