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

Ethical issues in engineering design
meaningless. The consequence of this is that all guidelines and calculation
rules of a regulative framework referring to stresses are inapplicable for a
product made in composites.
(2) In a radical design where the working principle and the normal configuration
have been changed or are new, elements of the existing regulative
frameworks may lead to contradictions. Some of the goals of the regulative
frameworks might still be relevant. For example, one goal of a regulative
framework is to produce a safe product, but elements of the framework that
should lead to safe designs can come into conflict with the goals of the radical
design project. For example, designing an automatically guided vehicle using
the existing regulative framework on traffic would lead to contradictions and
strange situations. In the current regulative framework pertaining to traffic a
vehicle should always have a driver but the goal of designing an automatically
guided vehicle is to design a vehicle that can move safely without a driver. 3 Of
course one goal of the traffic regulative framework is to achieve safe vehicles
and safe traffic flow and this higher level goal is still relevant for the design of
automatically guided vehicles. So the rationale behind the regulative
framework is still important but most legislation and codes contained in the
traffic regulative framework will not be applicable in the case of an
automatically guided vehicle.
(3) Radical designs can also be radical at a functional level. An explicit choice can
be made at the beginning of a design process to change the usual idea of a
good product of this product type or to introduce a new product type. This
means setting different criteria for a product or changing the relative
importance of criteria. It can be that the regulative framework or parts of it
pertaining to such a product are explicitly rejected or that there is no relevant
regulative framework for the new product. If a choice is made to make a
functional radical design then, from the start of the project it is not clear what
parts of the normal configuration or working principle will be used and what
parts will not be used, there may be no normal configuration and working
principle available to use for the design.
From the foregoing it may be concluded that a regulative framework may be
available in radical designs but that it will be rejected or not (completely)
applicable. Only in the first instance of radical design, can engineers still use
parts of the current regulative framework. This would mean that in general a
regulative framework cannot or can only partly be used in radical designs to
decide on ethical issues. This has two consequences. First, the ethical issues that
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3 Because Dutch legislation requires vehicles in public space to have a driver, special social
arrangements need to be made to carry out tests with automatically guided vehicles.
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