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

Design of a lightweight trailer
after loading, although he knew that some drivers transporting sugar beets
sometimes load too much and cannot reinsert the rods. According to the
customer you can see the side panels move when this happens. He also said that
his customers are informed not to use his trailers in this way. The extreme
scenario of a trailer loaded with more than 40 tonnes of sugar beets without
closed rods turning a corner while driving fast may cause the strains in the
material to exceed those that are allowed and calculated in the safety margins.
7.4 Ascribing responsibilities
During the interviews and the discussion after my presentation some implicit
ideas about the responsibilities of the different involved stakeholders were made
explicit (see section 1.2 and 3.3). The contract terms from the TNO waive all legal
liability for the use of results from TNO research to the customer(s). Only in
cases of fraud or severe negligence can the TNO be held liable for problems
caused by the application of their research results. So persons affected by
products designed using results from the TNO cannot easily turn to the TNO for
liability claims [TNO, 2003]. In accordance with this, the customer is ascribed
the major part of the responsibility for the design process.
The customer indicated in his interview that he felt responsible for providing
all the relevant information to the engineers. This could be information about
what he wanted but also about what problems he had encountered in previous
designs. The engineers should then come up with a design according to what he
wanted. The customer said that setting and adapting requirements was his
responsibility. With regard to overloading he indicated that while testing the
prototypes he would deliberately overload the trailer to test whether accidental
and intentional overloading would cause problems. He thought of using a load
of 39 tonnes and was considering testing the trailer to failure point. He also said
that a 32 tonnes load is reasonably high for some European countries, for
example in Switzerland or Germany 32 tonnes of sand will exceed the total mass
allowed in these countries.
Basically, the engineers thought that the customer had to decide what they
should design. If the customer defined a very narrow design problem then the
engineers had to stick to this narrow description of the problem. If the
description of the design problem was widened to include more aspects, then
they would include more aspects in the design process. The engineers came up
with examples of design problems where they had looked at broader safety
concerns than only structural reliability, for example when designing composite
yachts. There a collision with another boat might cause a leak. Usually collisions
did not lead to leaks but if thinner laminates are used this might happen. For the
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