ENSC 406 Tutorial: Week 6
 
Ethical Issues in Engineering Design: Risk, Safety, and Accidents
 

The engineering profession expects its members to do no harm and to protect workers, the public, and the environment. Chapter 5 of Engineering Ethics points to challenges that engineers may face in honouring this obligation:

  • Safety and risk are relative concepts; the degree of safety or risk is determined in a specific context and depends on many factors.
  • Tolerance for risk varies from person to person and from situation to situation.
  • Engineers are expected to "execute designs in such a way as to protect even someone who misuses the product" (Fleddermann, 65).

Avoiding unnecessary risk requires engineers to make safety an integral part of every design. This week you will explore the challenges of that obligation and provides a number of strategies for ethical analysis that can help engineers design with safety in mind.
 
Homework to complete before the Week 6 tutorial
 

Read Chapter 5 of Engineering Ethics and complete the following:

Required:

  1. Fleddermann views safety and risk as essentially subjective [or we might say contextual] and depending on many factors.” What are 6 factors that help determine how someone is likely to perceive risk?
  2. List four criteria for a safe design.  
  3. Under what conditions is it acceptable for engineers to place warning labels on products they know pose risks to the general public?
  4. What are the steps Fleddermann identifies as essential to designing for safety? Have you experience with this approach in industry or in research projects you’ve been involved with?
  5. Identify a potentially serious problem in the very nature of risk-benefit analysis and explain how to avoid it.
  6. Describe three types of accidents and explain why it is important for engineers to pay attention to these phenomena.
  7. Be prepared to discuss any of the following cases presented in Chapter 5:
    • The Crash of Valujet Flight 592
    • The Ford Pinto Exploding Gas Tank
    • The DC-10 Case
    • Cellular Phones and Automotive Safety
    Your tutorial leader may tell you in advance which case will be discussed in class, but you should take the time to read the other three and to apply the analytical framework developed in previous weeks to all of these cases.

Recommended:

  1. How much attention have the companies you’ve worked for given to safety? If it’s less than the profession expects, what are the constraining factors? Do you have any suggestions for overcoming these constraints?
  2. What is the relationship between personal and professional tolerance for risk?
  3. Read the other cases presented in Chapter 5. What can an engineer in your field learn from these cases?