On 10/4/2014 4:39 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
The thing is, the privilege to make that kind of business decision is wholly
dependent on the fact that there are no meaningful safety issues involved.
Compare that to the case of the Ford Pinto. The allegation made was that Ford
had preferred to risk paying out lawsuits to injured drivers over fixing a
design flaw responsible for those (serious) injuries, because a cost-benefit
analysis had shown the payouts were cheaper than rolling out the fix. This
allegation was rightly met with outrage, and severe punitive damages in court.
Unfortunately, such business decisions are always made. Nobody can make a 100%
safe system, and if one even tried, such a system would be unusable. A car where
safety was the overriding priority could not move an inch, nobody could afford
to buy one, etc.
The best one can do in an imperfect world is set a standard of the maximum
probability of a fatal accident. In aviation, this standard is set by
regulation, and airframe manufacturers are obliged to prove that the system
reliability is greater than that standard, in order to get their designs certified.
The debate then is how high can that standard be set and still have affordable,
useful products.
