That is why there are laws enacted to help keep people safe. But I believe that it is an engineer’s duty to be on the cutting edge of technology and be creative in their designs to keep people safe. A law cannot be enacted if there aren’t any products out available on the market. For example I would like to see law mandate that cars be installed with backup cameras. Rear view visibility systems have been in cars for more than ten years. They can be acquired aftermarket or be purchased as an option on vehicles. If put into law it is estimated that it would add less than one hundred fifty dollars to the cost of manufacturing a vehicle or if the vehicle already has a screen onboard it would cost less than an additional fifty dollars. This low cost feature could save thousands of dollars in medical cost from people being hit while backing up. It would also save money from people backing into objects and damaging their vehicle or other personal property. You may think that since backing up a vehicle is slowly that it doesn’t hurt many people. The fact of the matter is that thirty one percent of deaths in children under five is from vehicles backing into them and killing them. Harriet Peterson is an elderly woman that spent nine days in the hospital and now has her pelvis held together with metal because she was struck by a vehicle reversing from the curb. Such a small device could have prevented these accidents from occurring and I believe that everyone will agree a child’s life or that a woman being put in the hospital and now having trouble walking for the rest of her life is more important than a measly fifty dollars that it would cost to install the rear view visibility system. Simply spending fifty dollars to outfit a vehicle with this system could prevent over two hundred unnecessary deaths every year in the United States
That is why there are laws enacted to help keep people safe. But I believe that it is an engineer’s duty to be on the cutting edge of technology and be creative in their designs to keep people safe. A law cannot be enacted if there aren’t any products out available on the market. For example I would like to see law mandate that cars be installed with backup cameras. Rear view visibility systems have been in cars for more than ten years. They can be acquired aftermarket or be purchased as an option on vehicles. If put into law it is estimated that it would add less than one hundred fifty dollars to the cost of manufacturing a vehicle or if the vehicle already has a screen onboard it would cost less than an additional fifty dollars. This low cost feature could save thousands of dollars in medical cost from people being hit while backing up. It would also save money from people backing into objects and damaging their vehicle or other personal property. You may think that since backing up a vehicle is slowly that it doesn’t hurt many people. The fact of the matter is that thirty one percent of deaths in children under five is from vehicles backing into them and killing them. Harriet Peterson is an elderly woman that spent nine days in the hospital and now has her pelvis held together with metal because she was struck by a vehicle reversing from the curb. Such a small device could have prevented these accidents from occurring and I believe that everyone will agree a child’s life or that a woman being put in the hospital and now having trouble walking for the rest of her life is more important than a measly fifty dollars that it would cost to install the rear view visibility system. Simply spending fifty dollars to outfit a vehicle with this system could prevent over two hundred unnecessary deaths every year in the United States