Ethical issues in engineering design - 3TU.Centre for Ethics and ...

Ethical issues in engineering design
loading times. In the case of ro/ro ferries, shipping companies do not want to
have bulkheads on the decks because it takes time to put them in place while
loading the ferry. Moreover, fewer cars can be transported because the bulkheads
have to be designed in such a way that larger and smaller cars can fit between
them; this requires spacing between the bulkheads that is less efficient if large
cars and freight-trucks are considered. So shipping companies also trade off
safety against economic considerations.
Finally, the IMO and governments of individual countries also trade off safety
considerations against economic ones. As we saw earlier for IMO conventions to
be effective as many countries as possible have to support them. For many
countries, economic considerations will play an important part when it comes to
deciding which safety requirements they consider acceptable. This is reinforced
by the fact that shipping companies can choose which flag they sail under.
Governments could forbid ships that do not meet their stricter national
regulations from entering their harbours. There are economic reasons not to do
this. A government’s national harbours, where stricter regulations are enforced,
will have a competitive disadvantage compared to harbours in countries that do
not impose stricter regulation than the IMO regulation. This, in turn, reinforces
competition between countries when it comes to devising attractive rules for
shipping companies. Such competition may well water down safety
requirements.
To summarise, some of the important ethical issues in the case of the Herald of
Free Enterprise are the following: the ship’s design was inherently unstable once
water entered the car deck. Is it ethically justifiable to design, produce and use
ships that are in certain circumstances inherently unstable? What is the
responsibility of engineers in this complex situation? There were no warning
lights on the bridge, therefore it was not possible to establish from the bridge
whether the bow doors were closed or not. Should engineers attempt to anticipate
human errors during the design process? Is it the responsibility of the engineers
to design in a way that prevents human errors as much as possible or even to
design idiot proof ships? It is, for example, desirable to design ferries that cannot
leave port unless the bow doors are fully closed and secured. As we have seen in
setting the design requirements, trade-offs are made between safety and
economics. There is economic pressure to water down safety requirements. Are
trade-offs between economics and safety acceptable? Which of the choices
regarding this trade-off can be justified? Does following the regulations lead to
morally acceptable designs? Ethical issues that come up in design processes like
the ones mentioned above will be central in this thesis.
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