Risk and Liability

Confusion about Risk

• The public is confused about risk, sometimes because the public does not have the correct factual information about the likelihood of certain harms.
• The public seems to speak of risk in terms of the intensity of what they feel, focusing on “probability of death or injury.”
• It is believed that whereas both members of the Congress and ordinary laypeople may be confused about risk, the expert know what it is, especially correct factual information about certain harms.

Engineering Approach to Acceptable Risk

• The engineering concept of risk focuses on the factual issues of the probability and magnitude of harm and contains no implicit evaluation of whether a risk is morally acceptable.

Engineers and risk experts considering engineering solution often use a cost-benefit analysis that is fundamentally a utilitarian approach.

Engineering Solution based on the Cost-Benefit Analysis

• The cost-benefit approach compares the costs with the benefits of the actions.
• A typical solution of engineering is to maximize net benefit(benefit minus costs) consistent with economic an other constraints.
• The cost-benefit approach to comparing alternative engineering action has much in common with the utilitarian approach to choice between alternative actions in moral issues.
• The utilitarian approach to moral issues involves a qualitative, if not quantitative, comparison of utility with the harms, allowing the election of the alternatives that results in the greatest good for the greatest number.