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

DutchEVO, safe or sustainable?
Thomas: ‘You have to challenge regulations; regulations do tend to lag
behind.’
Some regulations were used to guide the design process and were seen by the
team members as something that smart people had worked on for a long time,
so they should strive to comply with the regulations. For example the regulations
on lighting and view angles should be met according to the design team. The
design team also thought that for a concept car to be realistic most regulations
should be taken into account.
Dave: ‘regulations give guidelines for the design process…… They give
guidelines and we want a realistic car so you take them [regulations] as
a guideline, you could take something else but you want to be realistic
and this is easy and well documented.’
However, some regulations were regarded as silly or not effective and the team
felt that regulations should be challenged. This was the case with crash safety
regulations. The team thought that the obligatory crash tests were inefficient.
Most actual crashes do not resemble the prescribed crash tests. A lot of fatalities
are due to speeding on roads and crashing at a speed of about 80 km/h or more
into a tree or lamp post or other solid object. The standard crash test at 64 km/h
into a wall is very different from a crash into a tree. According to the design team
challenging crash safety regulations can only be done using very good
argumentation.
4.4 Light throw away after use?
The definition used by the design team for sustainability is that of the World
Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland-commission
[WCED, 1987]. This commission defined sustainable development as a
development that meets the needs of the present generation without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Two
things are important in this definition.
1. The concept of ‘needs’, refers in particular to the essential needs of the
world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given.
2. The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social
organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future
needs.
The choice for a certain definition of sustainability is not ethically neutral
because such a choice implies a choice to include some things as part of a
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