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<< Talks
Historical Perspective
Peter Miller, Consulting Engineer, Australia
Koestler: The Sleepwalkers
Koestler: The Sleepwalkers
Technology Road
Duty of care
- about 70 years ago, Lord Atkin delivered his judgement
in the English case of Donoghue vs Stevenson and launched the current
common law concept of negligence
- his judgement translated the scriptural injunction
to 'love thy neighbour' into a duty of care
- that translation did not provide a basis for the
logical development of the law of negligence
- in particular the law has not developed a substantive
test to determine when a duty of care arises, or to determine when
that duty, if it has arisen, is satisfied
Duty of care
Logical development was inhibited by
- the need to access funds to provide long term care
for accident victims
- the ease of access to liability insurance and the
funds it set aside
- the subjective behaviour of expert witnesses
- human greed
Negligence
- in the last 20 years the law has descended into chaos
- pressure on liability insurers has increased to
the extent that some have failed, particularly in the field of medical
liability
- the liability fallout from the World Trade Centre
incident added to the fragility of the insurance market
- in Australia Government had to step in to prop up
the medical system, which was on the verge of collapse in May -
June 2002
Procurement contracts
- Virtually all procurement contracts are bought by a low bid
- Few provide on their face the necessary resources of time and money
for satisfactory execution
- Those which do not must be manipulated in order to obtain the necessary
resources.
- Attempts to counter manipulation by legal drafting have made the
contracts easier to manipulate
Koestler: The Sleepwalkers
Knowledge
Structural engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not
fully understand into shapes we cannot precisely analyse to withstand
loads we cannot properly assess in such a way that the public at large
has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance
A R Dykes (1946)
Richard Feynman
When someone tells me there is a 1 in 106 chance of something happening
I know he is full of crap
Confucius
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.
Confucius 551-479 BC
The Confucian Analects, †bk. 15:23
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