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

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DutchEVO, safe or sustainable? Often the heavy car is also very stiff and will deform less than the small lighter car. The heavy car uses the deformation zone of the lighter smaller car. This damages the lighter car even more and increases the chances of injury and death in the lighter car. If the heavier car is an MPV (Multiple Purpose vehicle) or SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) then most of the times it also has a large ground clearance. The stiff load bearing structure is higher above the ground than the load bearing structure of the smaller car. Therefore the heavy car will crash above the load bearing structure of the smaller car, for example it will crash into the door instead of into the floor in a side impact. This further diminishes the chance of the occupants of surviving the crash in the smaller, lighter car. A way to make such a light car safer in crashes is to change the design in such a way that heavy cars will crash into the load-bearing structure. This is called crash compatibility. In view of the foregoing it was decided that the floor of the DutchEVO will be higher, so that, in event of a crash, incoming cars will crash into the load-bearing floor. Including more and more passive safety systems (belts, airbags) would according to the design team, also enhance the feeling of safety and would therefore lead to an overestimation of the driver’s and car’s capabilities. Therefore the team wanted to evaluate critically all existing passive safety systems and did not want to include all of them. In the design team there was a difference of opinion about what to include and what not, especially regarding airbags. Inclusion of airbags adds mass. One of the discussions on airbags can be found in the introduction of this chapter. In this quote it can be seen that for some team members the lightweight criterion was more important. So in a trade-off between safety and lightweight, the mass of a system was decisive for them. Dave, in contrast, did not want to make a decision about the inclusion of passive safety system based on the mass of the system. He wanted to make that decision based on the efficacy of the system for preventing deaths and injuries. 4.3.3 Partner protection Protection of other people on the roads is often called partner protection. The protection of other road users has recently begun to gain more attention from governmental organisations and the car industry. Recently EuroNCAP started testing new car models in pedestrian impact situations. Most cars do not score well in these tests; they score 1 or 2 stars where 4 is the maximum number of stars that can be scored. There are at this moment only few car models that score 3 stars for the new pedestrian impact tests. 7 Some roadsters and large off-road —————————————————————————————————— 7 Information from EuroNCAP accessed 15 Jan 2004 [www.euroncap.com, 2004]. The tests for pedestrian impact were changed 1 Jan 2002. The scores for the old test are according to Euro- NCAP incomparable to scores for the new tests. 63
Ethical issues in engineering design cars perform especially poorly in pedestrian impact. New European regulation regarding partner protection and pedestrian impact will come into force in 2010. There seemed to be a consensus within the team that trying to prevent injuries and deaths among pedestrians and cyclists is primarily the responsibility of the driver. Although they considered the driver to be responsible for driving safely the design team thought that they had to keep in mind the more vulnerable road users as cyclists and pedestrians. Thomas had previous experience with the regulation that will come into force in 2010 as he has worked on a project for an engineering company to design a prototype car that complies with the proposed regulation. It was mentioned a few times that the influence of the high floor during impact with a pedestrian needed to be investigated using computer simulations. As far as I know, this had not been done. 4.3.4 Car security 64 Thomas: ‘..but there can be constructive parts where there should not be, especially regarding pedestrian impact. You could simulate that.’ Pete: ‘Yeah simulate that.’ Dave: ‘… [At this moment] there is no reason to change the geometry, pedestrian impact still needs to be simulated.’ Car theft, theft of things stored in the car or armed carjacking are daily events in most European countries. This aspect was overlooked by the design team for some time. After a presentation that Thomas gave to some people from Renault he received some questions on this issue. This might be a special problem because the design team proposed using fabrics in the non-load-bearing parts of the car doors. Breaking into the DutchEVO would then be easy. 4.3.5 Regulation During observation of design meetings, it became clear that the way this design team dealt with safety regulations was ambivalent. The quotes given below are loose fragments of discussions on regulations and the DutchEVO. Charlie: ‘In general you should follow that regulation. You need very strong arguments to not comply with the regulations.’ Dave: ‘If the regulations say this, I sometimes think the hell with those regulations.’
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Contents 1 Introduction 9 1.1 Resea
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Contents 7.3 Safe in what sense? 13
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9 Towards warranted trust in engine
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Towards warranted trust in engineer
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9.2 Radical design Towards warrante
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Samenvatting Ethische aspecten in o
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Samenvatting 1a. De soort ethische
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Samenvatting Sommige details worden
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Samenvatting zelf waardevol vinden
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Appendix 2 Members of the DutchEVO
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Appendix 2 Ryan: Industrial designe
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Curriculum Vitae Anke van Gorp was
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Simon Stevin Series in the Philosop
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