[SystemSafety] New Yorker article...

Thu Jul 30 03:24:06 CEST 2015

One thing I took away from the article was that there is a version of the
‘prosecutor’s fallacy’ at work here. After the Pinto case hit the headlines
it was obvious to everyone that this issue should have been dealt with but
at the time it was just one more case to deal with in a department with a
heavy case load. The question is not how risky the fuel tank issue was on
it’s own but where it sat relative to other issues the engineers needed to
deal with on the day, time being a limited resource.

BTW John the US FRA (I think) did a study on ‘un-commanded accelerations'
their conclusion that (leaving aside dash mats) the root cause was that
smaller European and Japanese cars had the pedals closer together than US
manufactured cars, apple unfamiliar with this would from time to time hit
the edge of the other pedal. Thing to remember is that these are very weak
performance shaping factors so it needs a lot of users and a lot of trips
before you get even a few events.

On 30 Jul 2015, at 9:26 am, Drew Rae <d.rae at griffith.edu.au> wrote:

Thanks for sharing the article John. I'm inclined to agree with the way the
article discusses the Pinto case specifically, but I find it ironic that
the journalist has a much more deterministic view of engineering than the
engineer does. It's very clear that "traceable cause" for Gioia is not
mathematical or logical concept, but a social construct - a "pattern" that
will create consensus for a recall. There is even an explicit social test
"which ones would pass muster with the executives upstairs".

I don't think there is anything wrong with safety being based on social
agreement. The problem is when people think that there is some formula or
algorithm that can tell you when something is safe. It is even worse when
the people operating the algorithms are totally unconscious of the amount
of individual judgement and group consensus-building that is involved.

An example from the article: "Engineers have a grievance. They think we
should think more like them. They are not wrong." This followed a passage
about allegedly disproportionate allocation of resources to fixing
technical risks than controlling driver behaviour through regulation and
enforcement. Not only does this misrepresent the engineering mindset (since
when has a hierarchy of controls suggested putting "tell the user not to
act dangerously" ahead of "improve the design"?) but it falsely suggests
that it is somehow more rational to treat risks of equal sizes equally.

Why? It would be very nice engineering-wise if we could. Within the limits
of uncertainty we could treat the design of society as a risk-minimisation
problem. What would be irrational would be to ignore the fact that people
don't have consistent risk preferences. Choosing which parts of travel to
regulate, and how to regulate them, is not an engineering problem. Like it
or not, the placement of a fuel tank is a more compelling and culpable
explanation for a death than the reaction time of the other driver. There's
no "rational" basis for this, but there's no "rational" basis to object to
it either.

Where I think the Pinto case is interesting is that there was nothing that
was non-normative about Ford's decision making, or even about the design of
the Pinto, within the automobile industry. There was a big gap between
those norms and what was expected in hindsight by the US public.
Discovering and reacting to that gap led to an automobile safety advocacy
movement that arguably pushed car standards and features beyond what the US
would have otherwise been comfortable with. (This is a country that still
has a vocal minority objecting to mandatory seat-belt wearing).

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On 30/07/2015, at 7:13 AM, John Downer wrote:

I don’t disagree. (Especially given that anyone pressing the accelerator
instead of the brake probably isn’t a driving prodigy to begin with.)

I think the wider points of the article still stand though. (That we have a
tendency to think about accidents emotionally rather than in terms of
numbers. / That there is a sort of ‘engineering mindset’. / etc.)

Mostly I just thought it was interesting to see the Pinto story told from
Ford’s perspective.
J.

-----------
Dr. John Downer
Global Insecurities Centre.
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS).
University of Bristol (UK)

On Jul 29, 2015, at 4:47 PM, Mike Ellims <michael.ellims at tesco.net> wrote:

There is one obvious flaw in the argument presented, it is stated that;
“Cars are engineered to be tolerant of pedal error: the driver who
depresses the accelerator, thinking it’s the brake, still has the option of
simply putting the car in neutral or turning it off. (That’s one of the
reasons that cars have gearshifts and ignition switches.)”

Which is true but irrelevant. For the average person stopping a car by
putting it into neutral or by turning the ignition off isn’t part of their
normal experience nor part of any planned or practiced set of responses to
emergencies (if there are any). Therefore the vast majority of people
(90%)( won’t be able to cognate a solution involving either response in an
emergency thus for the typical person neither is actually a viable option.

If I remember correctly after the Lexus crash involving a CHiP officer
Toyota did an internal survey and found that 30% of their own employees had
no idea what neutral was. The engineering mistake here is assuming that the
ordinary driver has the same internal model of how a car works as the
engineer, which is incorrect. For the average driver the options available
are usually limited to steer or brake.

Cheers.

*From:* systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de [
mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
<systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>] *On Behalf Of *John
Downer
*Sent:* 29 July 2015 19:25
*To:* systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
*Subject:* [SystemSafety] New Yorker article...

I haven’t been keeping up with list discussions as religiously as I should,
so I apologize if someone has posted this before, but I came across this
article and it struck me as something that people might appreciate:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/the-engineers-lament

It’s about the star-crossed Pinto, and made me think about it a little
differently than I had.

(If you find yourself on the wrong side of a paywall, just google the title
and it should send you through.)

John

-----------
Dr. John Downer
Global Insecurities Centre.
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS).
University of Bristol (UK)

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