Safety in Design

4 Safety Aspects Need Attention

4.1 Introduction

This chapter treats six cases concerning transport in Section 4.2 and four cases regarding the society in general in Section 4.3. Safety should have received more attention in all the 10 cases. A short description of these cases in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 follows now. First, the cases in Section 4.2. In the first case, the environment was an important aspect in the selection of natural gas instead of diesel oil for a bus. However, the bus became a flame‐thrower in a fire. In the second case, the desire to avoid paying toll played a key role in the decision to buy light trucks with trailers. However, a gust of wind can blow them off the road. In the third case, attention is paid to a car coolant that neither attacks the ozone layer in the stratosphere nor is a greenhouse gas. However, that car coolant is inflammable. The fourth case in Section 4.2 deals with a railway accident in Germany in 1998. Wheels with a tire were selected for Intercity‐Express (ICE) trains to avoid vibrations. There were rubber dampers between the wheels and the tires. A tire broke and it was the root cause of a major accident. Deutsche Bahn went back to solid wheels. It is an example of a worst‐case situation. What started as an incident became worse and worse due to unfortunate circumstances and ended in a catastrophe. The fifth case of Section 4.2 concerns the burning of a lithium ion battery in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Working with lithium ion batteries ...