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Comment by OnlyOneCannolo | Hacker News Reader

It takes institutional knowledge and experience to make a safe and reliable product. Even if you had a whole team dedicated to it, it's not much use if the rest of the company doesn't care or do their part.

It also takes money. But why bother protecting the consumer or even the company if you're not legally or financially liable yourself?

There's little incentive to do things right. And when there is, most people will only ever learn the hard way.

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> It takes institutional knowledge and experience to make a safe and reliable product.

Sorry no. This implies that reviewing the negligent faults in this Design was a difficult task.

A basic Hazard and Risk analysis would have flagged this.

Even if we ignore the lack of safety guards, I struggle to believe that it is legal to release a consumer product with this much torque without some form of overcurrent/stall/speed detection and safety cut-off.

I'm re-reading what I wrote, but I still can't see how you inferred that implication.

I agree that a hazard analysis should have identified it. But whether it did or didn't, there are still many possible reasons why it wasn't addressed effectively. Hence, a systemic failure.

I have no idea if it's legal, but any punishment would probably be on the company rather than the individuals.

I read it as if you were implying that identifying this was only attainable with very senior staff, which I disagree. But indeed perhaps I read too much into your comment.

If anything, it's the opposite. Even if engineering advocates for doing more about the problem, it only takes one manager screw it up. Either everyone has to want an ethical product, or there have to be formal processes to make everyone do the right thing whether they want to or not. Ideally both.

I really don't see why you think we need to regulate this sort of thing. It should be legal to release any sort of consumer product you want, and we clearly sell much more dangerous things at a hardware store. We shouldn't try to taxonomize consumer goods and regulate each category arbitrarily. We should just let producers and consumers make their own decisions. If I want to sell a treadmill with circular saw blades on each corner, and someone else wants to buy it, who are you to tell me that's wrong? If my hyper-dangerous fitness equipment company becomes wildly successful, how is that any different?

A treadmill cutting you is neither its purpose nor even a necessary risk.

Who are you to decide the purpose of and categorize something someone else is selling?

That's just how consumer protection and liability law works pretty much everywhere in the world. I don't make the rules. But they do exist for a good reason.

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