I agree with what you say, but at least in this country the anti-business pendulum has swung farther than you imagine. A couple examples.
Thurman Munson, a Yankee catcher in the '70s, was killed in his twin engine Cessna jet. He crashed short of a runway. His estate sued Cessna, not on the grounds that the jet was defective, but that Cessna had sold Munson more aircraft than he was capable of handling. Cessna demonstrated that it had sold Munson the model he wanted, but the plaintiff claimed that it was Cessna' duty to assess Munson's skills as a pilot and tell him, the customer, what aircraft they would sell him. I don't recall how the verdict was rendered, but I know Cessna paid something. Another case involved the death of a child in an automobile accident involving a minivan. The child was thrown from the vehicle, in part because the rear door sprang open on impact. Plaintiff claimed the door was poorly designed and that the child would have remained in the vehicle and maybe not been killed had the doors remained closed. Defendant pointed out that child was not restrained in vehicle, he was up and and about at the moment of impact. Documentation supplied with vehicle clearly states all passengers should wear restraining belts. Plaintiff countered that defendant should have known that if they built a vehicle as large as a minivan that kids would be up and about and vehicle should have been designed with that in mind. Again do not recall verdict but I am sure plaintiff did not walk away empty-handed. Agreed that a manufacturer is responsible for the safety of a product put into normal use. That was established by case law as far back as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, wherein an architect who builds a house that collapses and kills the owner is liable to the same fate. But the manufacturer today labors under a presumption of evil: if he makes a profit from selling a product, he must have skimped somewhere, because profits are intrinsically evil. ---------- From: "James, Chris" <c...@dolby.co.uk> To: "'acar...@uk.xyratex.com'" <acar...@uk.xyratex.com>, emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org Subject: RE: EMC-related safety issues List-Post: emc-pstc@listserv.ieee.org Date: Thu, Jan 3, 2002, 8:25 AM Ken, I don't think anyone could disagree with your sentiments. The problem is attributing the level of liability between user and manufacturer. Car manufacturers sleep at night yet their products kill thousands each year, they design them to high standards yet by their use they still kill and maim. Do we hold them liable, no, in 99.9% of cases we don't. You slip down the stairs and break your leg, do you sue: the caveman who invented the staircase? your shoe manufacturer for using a shoe sole incompatible with the stair carpet? the stair carpet manufacturer for using material incompatible with the shoe sole material? the distiller for not putting a warning on the bottle of whisky you just drank It's "reasonable responsibility/diligence" that needs defining, not "spurious emissions"!! In addition the legal fraternity should have some standards imposed upon them to put an end to pure gold digging through litigation that seems to just escalate and to which we thus have to pander. If every foreseeable mis-use of every commodity sold was accounted for then no-one would sell anything. Chris ______________________________________________ Chris James Engineering Services Manager Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (UK) -----Original Message----- From: acar...@uk.xyratex.com [mailto:acar...@uk.xyratex.com] Sent: 03 January 2002 12:54 To: emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org Subject: Re: EMC-related safety issues I get the idea that we a missing the whole point of this discussion. Should we as Professional Safety Engineers and Product designers consider the safety implications of EMC emissions ? The answer is a definite Yes. We have a clear duty of care and responsibility to consider all implications of our products being used in there intended application. Even if the consideration on EMC emissions and safety is "Do not be silly." We still have to at least consider it. It has been stated that CISPR22 and CFR Title 47 Part 15b is only concerned with interfering with radio transmissions. This is true and why the enforcement falls under the Federal Communications Commission. But not all products fall under this remit and could quite happily be emitting large EM fields and comply with all current US legislation. Take for example the line surge equipment you use to test immunity to EN61000-4-5, exempt from the Part 15B under section 15.29 as "A digital device used exclusively as industrial, commercial, or medical test equipment." And clearly not medical equipment. Yet when operated can produce a magnetic field that will interfere with the operation of old style pacemakers. Should you consider this when addressing the safe design of the product, or blindly state you meet all applicable EMC regulations for this product. With my unit the manufacturers have considered this and clearly state in the user manual that people with pacemakers should not operate or be be near the equipment when it is use. Two lines in the manual is not very big much against the risk the of killing someone. In Europe for CE we have no choice. The LVD state quite clearly that testing to a standard alone is insufficient to demonstrate compliance. You to consider foreseeable use and misuse, and you have to perform a risk assessment on your equipment. Taking it down to the standard level IEC60950 3rd Edition, section 0.2.7 states you must consider the effect of rf radiation on service and user personnel. Another example, you build a IPC cabinet for to be built into a production line, again exempt from CISPR 22, yet when it it running, causes interference on the control circuitry of a nearby Robotic arm. In the US immunity testing is not required, so who is liable. A susceptible Arm or noisy IPC cabinet. Being that every was fine until the cabinet was installed, you can see the blame would be pointed. Simply put, if EMC emissions from one of your products caused someone's death, because you did not consider it important. Could you sleep at night ? Ken Javor wrote: In my experience it is EXTREMELY unlikely that personal electronics could have disturbed ADF heading indication. The ADF sensor is an electrostatically shielded loop which is mounted typically on the belly of a transport class aircraft, well away from any passenger-conveyed intense sources of magnetic fields. The loop is very insensitive and requires quite a bit of magnetic field to respond and is completely insensitive to electric fields altogether. Further, no one would use ADF to line up an approach on a runway. ---------- From: Cortland Richmond <cortland.richm...@alcatel.com> To: Mike Hopkins <mhopk...@thermokeytek.com> Cc: cherryclo...@aol.com, emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org Subject: Re: EMC-related safety issues List-Post: emc-pstc@listserv.ieee.org Date: Wed, Jan 2, 2002, 5:26 PM If they meant "radio compass," that is a different can of monkeys. The radio compass was traditionally the indicator for the ADF set , pointing to the ground station, and was usually mounted so as to revolve in front of a scale which rotated with the aircraft's' magnetic heading. A noisy switching power supply could well interfere with a low-frequency receiver. But (in MY opinion) the Guide does not say enough about what actually happened. Cortland (My thoughts, not Alcatel's!) Mike Hopkins wrote: As already stated, the incident of the DC-10 has for years been used as an example of personal electronics (laptops) interfering with avionics. The only version I've ever heard (and the only one that makes sense) had to do with interference to an ILS receiver operating somewhere between 108MHz and 118MHz. I for one, don't believe in laptop computers interfering with a compass -- UNLESS -- the people reporting the story (and writing the guide?) used a "compass" as a way to relate to the general population that a laptop caused interference with an instrument that kept the airplane headed in the right direction -- probably assuming that most people would not be able to relate to an ILS or NAV receiver, but everyone knows what a compass is..... I remember the magazine article, which also reported on an electronically controlled wheelchair going out of control when an EMT keyed a mobile two-way radio in a nearby ambulance. (I might add, I've since heard several variations on that story as well -- wheelchair went over a cliff, wheelchair went around in circles, wheelchair dumped patient and took of by itself; radio was a walkie-talkie, radio was CB, etc.... You get the idea.) There was also a video being circulated of a Connie Chung news broadcast relating similar horror stories of the effects of EMC. We used to have a copy here, but I haven't seen it in years -- probably dumped when we moved.....My 2 cents worth......Mike HopkinsThermo KeyTek ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. 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