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

DutchEVO, safe or sustainable?
transportation are available, like buses, trams, walking and bicycling. Some of
these ways of transportation are definitely more energy efficient than driving a
lightweight car. Moreover, if the “good relationship” between user and car leads
to prolonged possession and use of the car, it is less clear to see what the effect
on energy consumption is, on the one hand the prolonged use might lead to less
use of raw materials, the production of raw materials usually consumes energy. 10
The recycling of materials consumes substantially less energy. On the other
hand engine technology advances and older engines are more polluting than
engines using new technology. Above this, engines become more polluting as
they age. It might be possible to only renew the engine after a period of time.
However, this shows that it is not obvious that emotional sustainability leads to
lower energy consumption.
Finally, two ethical problems concerning the trade-off between safety and
sustainability were encountered by the design team. The engineers wanted to
challenge existing ideas on car safety, which have led to increasingly heavier cars
with lots of passive and active safety systems. The engineers wanted a
lightweight car. This meant first of all that passive safety systems were only
going to be used if the engineers thought that they were effective and not too
heavy. There were discussions about including airbags and minimising the
amount of safety systems used because these systems make a car heavy. The
trade-off between safety and sustainability led to the second ethical problem that
a light car will always come off worst in a crash with a heavier car so people in
the light car will always be at a disadvantage. Trade-offs between safety and
sustainability were made in which the mass of the car was usually given priority.
4.6.2 Decision making on ethical issues
The decision making processes in the DutchEVO case can be characterised as
non-hierarchical; decisions on ethical issues were based on personal experience
and some criteria which became self-evident during the design process.
The organisation of the design process was non-hierarchical. Students made
decisions themselves, or together with their supervisor, about the part they were
designing. They discussed this choice in design meetings. All participants in the
design team were confronted with ethical issues. For some students the ethical
issues were related mostly to the operationalisation of sustainability, for others
the ethical issues were related to the trade-off between safety and sustainability.
It was not the case that some people made the decisions concerning for example
the operationalisation of safety and others were required to work with this
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10 This is only the case when large parts of the car are discarded after use, not when every part
or the complete car are sold or recycled rather then discarded.
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