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Duck Boat in Missouri Disaster was Designed by Entrepreneur With no Engineering Training

posted by martyb on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:01AM   
from the if-it-walks-like-a-duck,-sinks-like-a-duck,-oh,-wait... dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The duck boat that sank in a Missouri lake last week, killing 17 people, was built based on a design by a self-taught entrepreneur who had no engineering training, according to court records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The designer, entrepreneur Robert McDowell, completed only two years of college and had no background, training or certification in mechanics when he came up with the design for "stretch" duck boats more than two decades ago, according to a lawsuit filed over a roadway disaster in Seattle involving a similar duck boat in 2015.

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Original Submission

• Re:20 Years?Re:20 Years? (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:25PM (1 child)

  by requerdanos (5997) on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:25PM (#713190) Journal

  If vessels based on his designs have been in use for 20 years, then trying to [blame the] designer is ridiculous. This accident is a horrible tragedy, but find your scapegoat somewhere else.

  People can easily do horribly unsafe things and use horribly unsafe machinery for long periods of time without injury or death... until an injury or death occurs.

  Some questions [calpoly.edu] that we might ask about equipment to which we will briefly entrust our lives (adapted from the linked article):

  • Is it safe?
  • What can go wrong, and how severe are the consequences?
  • Does the operator know what he is doing?
  • What qualifications did the people who designed the machine have?
  • What safety tests were performed on the machine?
  • What is the failure rate of the machine?

  I would submit that the question "How many 20-year periods have happened where we got away without consequences" is similar to the "What's the failure rate" question, and as I understand it, the 20-year safety record isn't great, as demonstrated by the previous incidents [people.com] with the equipment:

  “When I saw the headline, it was just more of the same,” [said attorney Jeffrey Goodman.] “This was predicted by the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board]. They said it would happen again, and it did.”

  Further, the six questions above are adapted from an article on a piece of equipment with a much better safety record than the Duck Boats in question--only three deaths and three injuries, ever--that's now literally a textbook example of how poor design and relying on the attitude underlying your post leads to dead people who needn't have died: The THERAC-25. The linked article about it, above, is fittingly entitled "Death and Denial." The article was written in 2001 about events from the mid to late 80's. The point you are trying to make is late to the party.

  In short, you are entitled to your opinion, and I appreciate your sharing it, but I disagree, and offer the foregoing in support of my position.

  Parent

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• Re:20 Years?(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:37PM

  by sjames (2882) on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:37PM (#713327) Journal

  The duck boats are much safer that Therac-25 based on the number of "riders" vs. number of deaths or serious injuries. It's even worse for the Therac if you compare serious injuries or deaths while in normal operation. Duck boats don't normally operate in storms with 80 MPH winds.

  That's not to say there can't be improvements, there can always be improvements.

  Parent