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The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues
An anonymous reader writes: Malcolm Gladwell has an article in The New Yorker about how automotive engineers handle issues of safety. There have been tons of car-related recalls lately, and even before that, we'd often hear about how some piece of engineering on a car was leading to a bunch of deaths. Sometimes it was a mistake, and sometimes it was an intentional design. But we hear about these issues through the lens of sensationalized media and public outrage — the engineers working on these problems understand better that it's how you drive that gets you into trouble far more than what you drive.
For example, the Ford Pinto became infamous for catching fire in crashes back in the 1970s. Gladwell says, "That's a rare event—it happens once in every hundred crashes. In 1975-76, 1.9 per cent of all cars on the road were Pintos, and Pintos were involved in 1.9 per cent of all fatal fires. Let's try again. About fifteen per cent of fatal fires resulted from rear collisions. If we look just at that subset of the subset, Schwartz shows, we finally see a pattern. Pintos were involved in 4.1 per cent of all rear-collision fire fatalities—which is to say that they may have been as safe as or safer than other cars in most respects but less safe in this one. ... You and I would feel safer in a car that met the 301 standard. But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
For example, the Ford Pinto became infamous for catching fire in crashes back in the 1970s. Gladwell says, "That's a rare event—it happens once in every hundred crashes. In 1975-76, 1.9 per cent of all cars on the road were Pintos, and Pintos were involved in 1.9 per cent of all fatal fires. Let's try again. About fifteen per cent of fatal fires resulted from rear collisions. If we look just at that subset of the subset, Schwartz shows, we finally see a pattern. Pintos were involved in 4.1 per cent of all rear-collision fire fatalities—which is to say that they may have been as safe as or safer than other cars in most respects but less safe in this one. ... You and I would feel safer in a car that met the 301 standard. But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
Listen to the engineers and not marketing or the media? You must be crazy!
Maybe the brakes were too good, resulting in all the rear-endings?
Seriously, our scientifically-illiterate society is rife with unintended consequences and cures that are worse than the disease.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
"It's how you drive that gets you into trouble"
I've found that those who drive with blood alcohol levels above 1.0 lead to lots of trouble. Far more than any recent engineering defect I've heard of.
The biggest safety related maintenance problem is usually the loose nut behind the wheel.
Not always true. If I stand on brakes on my roadster with huge disks and sports tires I can guarantee that your minivan will rear-end me from a typical safe following distance.
When you drive, you have to always assume that everyone around you is an idiot with a death wish in a broken-down car and try to correct for this with your driving.
http://shameproject.com/report...
http://mikethemadbiologist.com...
Malcom Gladwell is the product of conservative institutes and think tanks; he has worked for racists, the tobacco industry, oil companies, big pharma, and more. His books popularize the kind of thinking that said industries have used to defend their practices.
Please help metamoderate.
Except of course, if you read the article (I know,must be new here) Ford actually _won_ the Pinto case and while they had previously (before the court case) agreed to install that plastic wall, the expert opinion was that it wouldn't actually accomplish anything and wouldn't have made any difference in the specific situation of the court case.
It's like saying horses should all be recalled because someone might fall off of them. Pintos were no more dangerous than other similar cars from all the other car companies. It's just how small, light cars were built in the days of high gas prices and associated regulations. Technology has advanced since then, but there are still trade-offs.
What most people "know" about Pintos is largely media-driven, not factual.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
We look at the Pinto specifically as a case study in my engineering ethics class back in college, there was not excuse for what they did. All engineers do have to make trade-off decisions, but the fucking deluxe fix was $11, that is it.
I doubt very very much if the final decision was made by an engineer. It was far more likely made by either an accountant or a lawyer.
It is actually a pretty good example, because it was not "an engineering disaster". That is just what the incompetent public mistakenly concluded.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I remember a bit of design in a small aircraft. In order to address the problem of gear-up landings, Piper came up with a system that, when it detected the appropriate combination of airspeed and engine conditions, would automatically lower the gear. It had an override so the pilot could indicate that this was not accidental and to not deploy the gear.
The system was very popular and copied onto a variety of aircraft. Nobody knows how many gear-up accidents were prevented since nobody calls up after a fine landing to report that they had actually screwed up and were saved by the auto-extend system. But the one person who failed to override the system after an engine failure and had the gear deploy filed and won a lawsuit claiming that the auto-deploy system was what caused them to be unable to glide to the airport. As a result, the manufacturers ceased making them and directed their removal from existing aircraft.
How long will it be before someone sues claiming that the auto-braking system in their car caused whiplash?
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
> I doubt very very much if the final decision was made by an engineer. It was far more likely made by either an accountant or a lawyer.
This is the key. I remember taking a required ethical course in engineering because it was felt that engineers must learn the human factor of their decisions. All the cases we studied where unethical decisions was made was a result of business or political decisions, not engineering decisions.
Like a private gets blamed when a general messes up, engineers get blamed when a VP messes up. There is a reason why generals and VPs rarely write down orders or decisions.
You win!
You made a horse analogy on Slashdot about a car named after a horse. That is a many layer onion.
Fantastic.
BlameBillCosby.com
$300k in 1970's dollars was a reasonable number for safety calculations back then (about $2 million in today's dollars). The current number used by government regulators is about $5 million.
Engineers and the legal system constantly put a value on human life; modern societies couldn't function without it. Often, the value is a lot less than $2 million ($300k in 1970). Safety engineers use larger numbers because juries suffer from the same kind of self-righteous indignation you display. But make no mistake: paying too much for safety in some areas means that overall, there will be less safety.
The natural consequence of the Pinto decision is not for engineers to use a larger amount of money in their cost/benefit calculations, it is to avoid studying potential safety issues altogether that might get the company into trouble.