When a consumer product is implicated as the possible cause of serious injury or death, the questions asked often focus on what company officials knew about the risk and when did they find out. How soon after learning about the possibility of danger, or its foreseeability, did they do something to correct the problem? What measures were in place to avert needless injuries? To what extent were human factors considerations weighed, early on, to identify and anticipate the risk? How conscientious was the company in addressing a hazard, once it was brought to its attention? Bottom line, what is the responsibility of a manufacturer - or seller, importer, or distributor, for that matter - to detect product hazards early in the process, before the death or injury statistics begin to accumulate? How much danger is too much for a consuming public to endure, or for a legal system to countenance? This chapter suggests that in so many instances, companies and industries of which they are a part of come to know about the likely risks to the public from their products. Like the mower industry, too often they do not live up to their responsibility to be conscientious in addressing those risks early on, from a design perspective. Across the board, many accidents can be averted and many injuries prevented. It really does not matter whether the frame of reference is household goods, toys, products used in recreation or at school, autos, tires, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, or the like. Untold lives can be saved, to the extent that manufacturers and sellers adjust their policies and mindsets to make safety a priority in order to better anticipate the way in which their products are actually used, and to insist upon incorporating that awareness into the product's design.
Abstract