When is a Manufacturer required to inform people about a defect?

[Rdutch 0]

Ok, I wont go into details. But I want to know the general Idea of the skydiving community on this.

If a manufacturer has a problem, for example: a line attatchment tab that tear's, soft cutaway housing's that have hard pull's, anything else that can contribute to someone dying due to gear failure. When should the Manufacturer release the information? Investigating the problem takes time, of course, and it cost's money. But with something as dangerous as skydiving, should we have a zero tolerance policy? I know in the past there has been many problem's, skydiving gear was designed by humans and humans make mistake's. And in the end after a few accident's, or fatalities the product was no longer sold, or was modified. My personal belief is one Fatality is too many! So if there is even a question of a problem, then something should be done immediately.
Someone from Precision just posted that they tried to get the Faa to do something about the atatchment tape problem they had with their reserves, and the Faa replied that there wasn't enough fatalities to warrant anything. Am I the only one that thinks this is crazy?
No one makes a perfect Rig, but I want to know if there is a problem with mine, when the manufacturer find's out. This is a dream, but we as customer's and Skydiver's should stand up and demand it. We are lucky to have a place such as this forum, where we can hear about and discuss thing's, if not we would all be in the dark, not everyone has the oportunity to hear about thing's that are happening.
Anyway Im getting off track, All I want to know is when is a manufacturer required to release information about a potential fatal problem?

Ray
Small and fast what every girl dreams of!

[bodypilot90 0]

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Someone from Precision just posted that they tried to get the Faa to do something about the atatchment tape problem they had with their reserves, and the Faa replied that there wasn't enough fatalities to warrant anything. Am I the only one that thinks this is crazy?
No one makes a perfect Rig, but I want to know if there is a problem with mine, when the manufacturer find's out. This is a dream, but we as customer's and Skydiver's should stand up and demand it.

It would seem the rig maker canopy maker would be pro-active. For their own long term sales if nothing else. If not then it's time to get legal Help.

[NightJumper 0]

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When is a Manufacturer required to inform people about a defect?

1. When the FAA orders it.

2. When a court of law orders it.

[PhreeZone 20]

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When is a Manufacturer required to inform people about a defect?

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1. When the FAA orders it.

2. When a court of law orders it.

Bingo!

The question should be "When should they inform people"

Answer to that one is a bit harder to answer. Is a single report of a canopy collapsing enough to ground the whole canopy line? Is a report of a single Cypres misfire enough to recall all the units? Or should there be more then one instance of something happening?

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[skybytch 273]

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The question should be "When should they inform people"

Answer to that one is a bit harder to answer.

Yup. While every manufacturer wants their products to be 100% safe, shit does happen. When it does of course they want to protect their customers - the skydiving public - but they also want to protect their "good name." Deciding when to disclose a defect is a balancing act between the two.

It's a pretty safe bet that every manufacturer looks at the circumstances of an incident involving one of their products very closely. If it's determined that a piece of the gear failed due to a design or manufacturing defect it's also a pretty safe bet that every manufacturer will be looking into why and how to prevent it from happening again.

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Or should there be more then one instance of something happening?

Is one instance enough? Depends on the gear. One canopy collapse? Not neccessarily. Canopies collapse for a number of reasons; a design or construction flaw may not have been the reason for the collapse even if no other "reason" can be determined post-accident. One instance of lines catching under grommets (Reflex, Javelin and Vector bulletins of 2000)? Yes. One's enough; in cases like those it was obviously a problem with the containers that caused fatalities.

[riggerrob 643]

A manufacturer "should" inform customers any time a defect may endanger their lives. Ideally the recall notice is issued before anyone dies.
For example, Butler re-sewed dozens of XTC-500 canopies when we suspected that a few were missing zig zag stitching in the skirt reinforcing webbing, even though none of those canopies was ever jumped..
Rigging Innovations replaced hundreds of reserve pilotchutes - on original Talons - even though no-one suffered worse than a slow opening.
R.I. re-worked hundreds of rigs even though only a handful of Cypres cables were damaged.
Para-Phernalia replaced a bunch of ripcords because the pin spacing was a little off, even though a full-pull would have opened every container.
etc.
Not all of these recalls were published.
If a small batch of defective components can be recalled with a few phone calls, then there is no need to tell the magazines, FAA, etc.
The FAA has decided not to issue any more Airworthiness Directives. Maybe it is because the FAA does not want to be bothered, perhaps because one airline crash kills more Americans than all the skydiving fatalities per year.

[billvon 3,107]

You can't realistically have a zero tolerance policy. If we recalled every canopy that ever collapsed, every rig that had a line/grommet hangup, every riser that ever broke, we wouldn't have any gear to jump. You have to use good judgement to decide when something is a freak occurrence and when something is a serious problem.

When is it a serious problem? If a main of a certain type sees one mal a weekend, perhaps that's a serious problem. But if there are 15,000 of those type out there, that's actually a pretty good record. If there are 20, then it's a much more serious problem. I think most manufacturers are pretty good about this, with a few exceptions.