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Comment by En_gr_Student | Hacker News Reader

I think the guy was out of line. I'm an engineer. I had to put at least a decade of my life, 1/8 if stats are right, into freaking hard work to earn the right to use the title, and the skill-set to not kill people while doing it.

That guy is a slap in the face to every engineer who had to work for their credentials instead of "name it and claim it" in the name of "free speech".

This is like shouting "fire in a theater" - it causes harm. Claiming to be an engineer, and driving public opinion based on that false credibility, is dangerous. Setting a precedent for it absolutely and without a single doubt has already cost many people their lives (look at Mexico deaths from earthquakes) and absolutely and without a doubt stages for more people to lose life and substantial property.

If one falsely claims to be a police officer, and extorts a fine, it is a crime. I see this as being on the same order of harm to the society.

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In Oregon you would not be titled as an "engineer", what you are describing is a "Professional Engineer", which is not what the original letter writer was claiming to be.

It's not like this is a new use of the word, "software engineering [1]" has been around for at least 70 years. So if you're trying to fight a battle against the misappropriate of the term "engineering", that battle was lost long ago.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_software_engineerin...

How is talking about this going to kill people? Does this guy get to decide how to set the traffic cameras? He is just expressing his opinion.

+ he wasn't trying to commit a crime, he was trying to have a discussion with the state about their scummy practices. the "is/is not engineer" was just a pretext to tell him to STFU. Personally I don't think that being an engineer changes anything he said/did. If random Joe want to challenge the timing of the yellow light sure go ahead. If this guy who has worked in another country as an engineer does this... whoooaaaa... put the brakes on.

I think the argument is something along the lines of: the public hears that an engineer is making certain claims and then push for the laws to be changed. Running of yellow/red lights ends up killing a lot of people. Perhaps without this passive enforcement, more people would die.

Having read some local news about the incident, it sounds like his wife blatantly ran a light according to the laws of Oregon and he attempted to get it thrown out using a dubious technical argument.

http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/02/joseph...

I think the argument is something along the lines of: the public hears that an engineer is making certain claims and then push for the laws to be changed

If laws are passed based only on the claims of any person (regardless of his engineering certifications) and without any independent validation that's not the fault of the person making the claim.

His arguments actually were very good. Response time is never instantaneous. Oregon's yellow light law is incredibly dangerous. No one knows when it will end, stopping in the middle of an intersection can create an accident too.

If you believe that Järlström misrepresented himself then, like the State of Oregon, show us the quote where he did so.

People with professional engineering titles are the dregs of the engineering profession, they couldn't get work without certification. So they got it and parade it around like self important dweebs, so that people hopefully won't realize how poorly qualified they actually are.

You are painting a lot of people with a broad brush. I know a number of PE's, (electrical and structural) and they are, as the title says, Professional. They engineer 100 million dollar projects, the aren't just someone pretending to know what they are doing.

You're right that "they couldn't get work without certification" but that's because such certification is required for the work they do, it's not some way for them to get work that they are not qualified to do.

Do you have a better system of vetting that the engineer that's designing the building you work in is competent?

I'm all for private certification processes. If they have value customers will prefer and even require them.

I'm totally against attempts at labor monopolies by using government to curtail other peoples right to work, and their free speech. Beyond those problems, there is an inherent bias in government certification programs. They are frequently captured by their participants and their standards change over time to focus on excluding outsiders over improving the value of certification. They often become insular and processes become dated.

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