Engineering: The Bay Area Rapid Transit Case Study

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Recommended: ethics in engineering and morals

Engineers design, build or maintain applications and systems to solve various societal problems. Their behaviors thus have a non-negligible impact on human development. Oftentimes, however, engineers are faced with the dilemma to choose between compromising their code of ethics and threatening their promising careers. It is important that engineers deem public welfare as a supreme concern and stand their ground so that they will report any observed situations that potentially can harm public safety to their superiors. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) case study is a good example of engineers being responsible with society in that they attempted multiple times to inform their supervisors in management about their concerns with the possible imminent system failure of BART. Even though their voices were ignored and they were fired by the company in the end, they made the passengers realize the probable dangers underneath this regional rail service. Consequently, on October 2nd, 1972, as a result of Automatic Train Control (ATC) failure, a BART train overshot the station at Fremont and wounded several people. In order to prevent these tragic accidents from happening, the BART case needs to be further examined for deeper understanding of the problem. This paper will use deontological ethical framework to address the cause of BART train system failure and recommend feasible plans to avert similar tragedies from occurring in the future to BART employees. Therefore, not only engineers, but also managers and board of directors should be educated about ethics and should be familiar with basic technical knowledge regarding their business.
BART is a fast modern rail transit system, with 34 stations and 75 miles of track, serving the counti...

... middle of paper ...

... will be reachable.

Works Cited

Bruder, Robert, Letter to author, June 10, 1973.
Friedlander, Gordan, “Bigger bugs in BART: Six months in partial service have raised questions about BART’s automation and its safety features,” IEEE Spectrum, Mar. 1973.
Hjortsvang, Holger, “BART System Engineering,” memorandum to Director Daniel Helix, Nov.
18, 1971.
Memorandum to CSPE attorney, Mar. 7, 1972.
Post, Alan, “Investigation of the operation of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District with particular reference to safety and contract administration,” California State Legislature, Nov. 9, 1972.
Roberts, Justin, News article, Contra Costa Times, Mar. 8, 1972.
Unger, Stephen, “The BART Case: Ethics and the Employed Engineer,” IEEE CSIT Newsletter,
Jan. 4, 1973.
Unger, Stephen, “2.3 The BART Case,” Controlling Technology: Ethics and the Responsible Engineer, 20-27, 1994.

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