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I.M.H.O. most products go out to market with minimal safety research. It is
simply impossible to predict what dangers, or failures would be expected
with either product use or environment - besides, product safety is a new
science, still in it's infancy.
So often, the manufacture has spent huge sums on research and development
costs, not to mention fixed production lines and loads of unsold stock.
Therefore they are often stuck with updating manuals with warnings, rather
than changing the designs. The airplane manufacturers are a good example of
this, where junking an expensive line of existing planes is not an option,
so they require more checks per hour than originally planed. To do
otherwise, would see both the CEO and CFO disappear at their next
stock-holder's meeting.
I would agree that there are also companies out there that place warnings in
order to skirt responsibility. But it is not good practice (in my mind) to
kill off your customers. ;-)
Bruce
Kevin Cheek wrote:
> All of this begs the question: What is the purpose of
> a safety warning, to protect the consumer from injury,
> or to protect the manufacturer from a lawsuit?
>
> Philosophically, I firmly believe that great care
> should be put into should be put into designing both
> products and warnings for maximum safety.
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