Episode 29 – Ethics and DC-10s

Safety engineering and management is full of compromises. We compromise between short term and long term risk. We compromise between absolute assurance and practicability. We compromise between blame and understanding. The one thing we can't compromise is our professional code of conduct. Or can we? Should our actions be bound by a strict set of rules, or by their intended and expected outcomes? Is an action good because its what we would want if we were in someone elses shoes, or because it makes us into the sort of person we want to be? And just how did McDonnell Douglas manage to stage two near-perfect dress rehearsals before a DC-10 crashed into the French woodlands? Episode transcript is now available.