Interpretations a) and b)

The various models of engineering practice can also be considered when interpreting Canon 1. The Malpractice (or minimalist) model would assert that as long as standards are being followed, you have acted appropriately. The Reasonable Care (or Due-Care) model suggests that you must consider likely outcomes of your work and provide for them in the engineering design. The Good Works model extends the Reasonable Care approach to consider what “should” be done to protect the public health and welfare. Consider, for example, the location and support of the Ford Pinto gas tank. Was the Ford design a minimalist, reasonable care, or good works approach?

A minimalist might suggest that proper use of a car does not include accidents, and from this point of view, the original design is acceptable. Reasonable people know that accidents do happen, however, and most consumers would argue that vehicle designers should take a reasonable care approach and consider probable accidents, such as moderate-impact, rear-end collisions. According to this approach, the gas tank assembly should have been redesigned. A “good works” design might include a multi-cell bladder such as those in racecars, so that fuel spill and fire hazard are minimized if an accident occurs. But would consumers pay the additional cost for a “good works” design?

Canon 1 states that engineers will hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of their duties, but in reality, engineers must make tradeoffs between safety and cost when designing vehicles. The $11 bracket for the Pinto ($60 in 2009) does not seem like much, and increasing the price by this amount would probably not affect a purchase decision. There could be hundreds of such parts, though, and upgrading all of them might add thousands to the sticker price. To put things in perspective, note that the inflation-adjusted value of a human life, which was $200,000 in 1970 according to the NHTSA, is about $1,100,000 now.

Under Canon 1, what is the responsibility of the engineers working on the Pinto design or performing the economic analysis to justify a redesigned gas tank assembly? They could use the reversibility principle and ask themselves whether they would drive the car or, better still, whether they would let their teenage child drive it.

At a larger scale, what level of natural occurrence (e.g. hurricane; Mississippi River flooding) should the levees protecting New Orleans be designed to withstand? While Hurricane Katrina exposed some design and maintenance flaws, it also raised the issue of the level of protection that should be the basis for the design. Utilitarianism is the ethical model used to answer this type of question, but, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, costs and benefits are difficult to quantify. Our role as engineers is not only to ensure that the design is correct but also to question the design basis.