Essay Sample: The Engineering Code of Ethics

This deficiency in sight distance was against the engineering standard. If a pedestrian walks at the average speed of four feet per second, it would take him or her thirteen seconds to cover the whole distance at this intersection. The uncontrolled speed of 45mph in this section, lack of any traffic controlling device, extensive width of about 62 feet and the deficiency in sight distance, greatly increased the pedestrians risk and danger at this section. Since a vehicle traveling at this speed would take fourteen to fifteen seconds to reach the intersection from either side of the extremities. Hence at this time, the department of transport showed negligence to a well-stipulated set of standard designs set in nineteen eighty-six that were actively effective during the projects progress time. Another retired department of transport traffic engineer testified for the plaintiff citing that from August nineteen eighty-seven to August nineteen eighty-eight there were nine reported accidents seven of which were related to angle collision where four of them caused injuries which if the reliable measures were put in place could have been prevented. Consecutively another department of transport traffic engineer gave a testimony that the time between January nineteen eighty-six and June nineteen eighty-seven there occurred ten angle collision at the same intersection all this were presumed to occur due to the short sight distance that is allegedly three hundred and twenty feet as initially designed by the department of transport. In nineteen ninety-four collisions, all taking place at a right angle were recorded, and another one from the rear end was witnessed. The following year another four collisions all at right angles were reported.

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In this case, it can be seen that the department of transport overlooked the second code of Australian ethic clause 2.3. It states that the practice should be by the commonly accepted standard of the day as for this case the set engineering standards of nineteen eighty-six, it also clearly states that the engineers should inform the clients or the employees if any task given requires qualifications and experience[1] outside the area of competence. It goes without saying that the engineers in this project did not take into account all the possible considerations during the widening project. Alternatively after numerous reported cases even with an expert's opinion, the department of transport did not heed this cry, which vividly described their negligence and lack professionalism [3].

Conclusion

For malpractice to stop, every engineer must be held accountable for any act of unethical practices, the punishment and penalties should be paramount. Like in this case if the chief engineer were involved and held accountable for this faulty job presentations, perhaps the life of the innocent pedestrian would have been saved and avoid numerous road accidents that occurred after that. The engineering code of ethics must be respected and followed to the letter.

References

Biostec (Conference), In Fred, A., In Filipe, J., & In Gamboa, H. (2013). Biomedical engineering systems and technologies: 4th International Joint Conference, BIOSTEC 2011, Rome, Italy, January 26-29, 2011, Revised selected papers. Berlin, Germany: Springer.

Findlaw. (2002, July 24). Court of Appeals of Georgia. Department of Transportation v. Dupree et al. Retrieved from http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ga-court-of-appeals/1264569.html

Fodor, G. A. (2001). Ontologically Controlled Autonomous Systems: Principles, Operations, and Architecture.