Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
The designers may have submitted a proposal for a 'safer' design, only to have it scuttled by bean-counters willing to play quarterly profits against the statistical odds of catastrophic failure, like Morton-Thiokol did with the Challenger disaster.
It's an ultimately-more-expensive way to design. But sometimes it takes the loss of human life and the risk of corporate bankruptcy in order for committees to finally allow for product specifications which include higher-cost fail-safes.
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I'm sure you're right... I've been hearing the Thomas Sowell quote a lot recently; there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Cost isn't the only possible way to improve safety. Perhaps the pack could have been made safer if it were bigger, which would reduce range since it wouldn't fit as much battery into the same space, for example.
Beans must be counted though; it's not an optional task. At some point everything is deemed "safe enough" even though it could be made safer. We only benefit from hindsight that perhaps the design was flawed, and who knows if it really is considering LG is replacing the batteries with essentially the same design. Safe enough, apparently.
...and just to clarify for others, no people have been harmed from the LG battery fires so far. Fortunately only property loss has occurred. Interesting that despite zero fatalities, it still resulted in a $2B remedy. I suspect the perceived risk is doing greater damage than the actual risk.