John Forester

I am responding not only to this but to several of the following illuminating posts about engineering and engineering ethics.

The field of bicycle transportation engineering has to constitute several fields that for other transportation fields are largely separate. Separate because bicycle transportation involves different fields, such as human physiology, human factors, aspects of traffic engineering, legal concerns, urban patterns, sociology, and others. Combined because none of these fields chooses to pay much attention to cyclists and bicycle traffic, so it is necessary to consider bicycle transportation as a system that has no other disciplinary home.

I am a certified and licensed industrial engineer and professional engineer in California; I was practicing and teaching in the field long before I chose to concentrate on bicycle transportation. I now call myself a bicycle transportation engineer, and I use the initials MS, PE after my name. When asked to justify that use when practicing in bicycle transportation affairs, I say that consideration of bicycle traffic in terms of human factors, operating systems, training considerations, social systems and the like is consistent with the analyses required to design an operational system that produces goods or processes that are beneficial. In that respect, industrial engineering is a closer fit to bicycle transportation engineering than any other single field.

But who does our society employ in the bicycle transportation field? We get urban planners who have no knowledge of the field, people such as Prof Pucher who openly admits in public meeting that "I don't care about engineering. I just do what's popular." We get the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycling Professionals, which has no engineering standards or ethics than one can discern, except that they are "Professionals", meaning that they work for money. Even when a Civil Engineer or Traffic Engineer puts his approval on a design, he may indeed be doing the official act in accordance with published standards, but those standards are not only worthless, they are harmful. They were designed by motorists with the intent of keeping bicycle traffic out of the way of motorists (I was there, right through that process) for the convenience of motorists, and they have never even been properly tested to see whether they do that. There have never been any other tests of their design principles, and their design principles contradict standard and well-tested traffic-engineering knowledge. That's the kind of politically-motivated, anti-cyclist, pseudo-engineering that gets inflicted on lawful, competent cyclists.

No matter what motorists want, or how the ill-informed bicycle riders choose to behave, lawful, competent cyclists ought to be allowed (encouraged would be better, but that's not what our society is prepared to give) to operate according to the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles, just like all the legitimate drivers are allowed and required to do.

Roody

An engineer who designed a faulty bridge would not be excused because the government funding the bridge asked him to cut corners. Morally and legally, he would be required to tell the government officials that the bridge cannot be safely built on their budget.

But I am aware of street designers and engineers who built roads that killed people say that they are blameless because they were not given a large enough budget to build a proper road.

jputnam

At least in my experience, when traffic engineers are faced with this sort of situation, they document the cost-vs-safety problems in their reports and pass the decision on to elected officials.

Once elected officials say "build it for $x despite the risk," the engineers do their best within their budget limitations, but they don't have the authority to expropriate private funds to build a better road. The best they can usually do is continue to document the design tradeoffs as the project proceeds, so the elected officials can't claim they didn't know what they were approving.

If it's a choice between no road and a faulty road, sometimes no road gets built, but more often its a choice between a new road that isn't quite perfect and an existing road that's woefully inadequate.

If the new road is safer than the old one, and if elected officials can't or won't raise taxes to pay for an even safer road, is that really the engineer's fault?

BikeLawyer

Thanks for all the commentary. Here, two guys who are on a Bikeway Advisory Committee started by the City presented an 8 page report on bike and ped crashes and made a few recommendations for signals, signage, etc. Basically the same stuff that EVERY Bike Advisory committee does in every significant city in Ohio. HOwever, here, a city employee - the former city engineer - reported them to the State Board claiming they were practicing engineering without a license. The State Board sent very intimidating certified mail letters to the two guys, and copied the Ohio Attorney General. I have submitted a response on their behalf but I am looking for other examples from around the country. There is one case in Ohio with similar facts, which was resolved favorably for the citizen.

The NC situation is VERY pertinent. There, the State DOT reported a citizen to the NC Engineering Board after an apparently very well done report was submitted. This generated a huge outcry from folks who recognized immediately that a citizen's right to challenge government policies and decisions is highly protected First Amendment right. The fellow, David N. Cox, apparently beat the rap... but I haven't found the case, or citation to an article that discusses that in any detail yet...

Thanks for everyone's comments and input!

Steve Magas
The Bike Lawyer

mikeybikes

I think that's just plain wrong. The citizens were asked to do something for the city, so they responded with what they thought was a good solution. I see no problem with citizens making recommendations like that. It should be up to the city to have an engineer sign off on those plans to make sure they are suitable.

I'm no lawyer though...

unterhausen

the state licensing board is almost surely made up of licensed engineers. So they are somewhat biased towards the licensed engineers in this case. However, they are authorized with specific duties and limitations as are licensed engineer. It seems likely that this is a case of over-reach on their part. There is almost surely an authority over them that can smack them upside the head for shenanigans like this. In fact, this seems like a breach of the ethics clause to me. I would consider making an inquiry about filing an ethics complaint against the board members and the guy who made the complaint.

I checked the law in Pennsylvania. It has the following clause: The board in Pennsylvania has 3 members of the general public in addition to a larger number of licensed engineers, geologists and surveyors. These members of the general public are likely to go along with the rest of the board though. The board is part of the department of state, so the SOS is in charge.

sggoodri

Here is a follow-up article from the N&O:
https://www.newsobserver.com/2011/04/...neer-over.html

chipcom 

Don't confuse the issue with reality.

sggoodri

A city-sanctioned advisory committee usually has a city staff member who acts as a liason. It would be that staff member's responsibility to send engineering recommendations through the city engineering staff before creating an official document of recommendations to the city council. Was no such staff member involved here?

Also, I have seen some city area planning documents and development concept plans produced by planners and lansdcape architects go to decision making bodies without review by PEs. Sometimes the planners incorporate hair-brained facility designs that no PE would ever sign off on, and I've had to make a fuss or blow the whistle to the engineers to get them fixed. On occasion, the engineer who puts their stamp of approval on a planner's work product won't pay any attention to the bicycle facilities because the P.E. has no training in bicycle transportation engineering or bicycle facilities. But the planner doesn't have such training either; he's just incorporating concept ideas generated by a focus group. I find it scary that as a planning and zoning board member voting on a plan, I would be the first and only one to point out that it's a bad idea to, for example, route bicycle traffic onto a narrow raised center median in the middle of a 25 mph residential cul-de-sac street, or run an 8' wide bike path alongside a concrete wall with no buffer and then make a right angle turn at a blind corner.

Whatever the bike advisory committee did, I suspect it's not nearly as bad as what I've seen some AICP's do.

sggoodri

In Raleigh NC, a group of bicycle facility advocates promoting bike lane striping as an alternative to sharrows on Hillsborough Street created a professional-looking presentation to promote their design. They went to a different, but somewhat similar looking road one Sunday morning and marked bike lanes on it using white duct tape. They then staged photos of a large SUV passing bicyclists riding in the bike lane with wide berth, then staged additional photos of the SUV riding too close to the cyclists while the cyclists rode in the door zone without the bike lane striping. They presented these photos to city council in order to get the council to order the public works department to find a way to shoe-horn bike lanes into Hillsborough Street.

The problem with this was that the staged photos depicted a much wider expanse of pavement than existed on Hillsborough Street. There simply wasn't nearly enough room to create a bike lane on Hillsborough Street that would allow cyclists to ride outside the door zone while also allowing SUVs or buses to pass at such wide distance; a raised center median, 16' travel lane and 7' of parking lane to the curb meant that the only way for SUVs to pass legally would require cyclists to ride squarely in the door zone. But the mockups that the cyclists created achieved their intent of misleading the city council into thinking that the striping would improve safety for cyclists on Hillsborough Street. This charade would have fallen on its face if the city engineers had done a better job with their tape measure and pointed out the wild inconsistency between the mockup and the details of actual implementation, but by the time the engineers realized this, it was too late.

Were the bike lane advocates acting unlawfully? I don't think so. Their presentation was inaccurate and misleading, but I'm not sure it was intentionally dishonest. I think the city engineers should have done a better job of technical analysis and worried less about speaking critically of citizen input in that case.

Booger1

So if people that ride the city on their bicycles make recommedations of where there should be some lights and stuff,they are now considered as engineers.....This is laughable.....

So what if they put a sign on every block and a light on every other block....somehow this is going to cause somebody bodily harm? Laughable

Is the light going to fall down and hit somebody in the head? This is Laughable!

Typical City Hall wisely spending OUR money......

bluefoxicy

That's insane. They created a more congested, dangerous traffic situation with increased driver stress and contention, rather than leaving everything up to the cyclists and motorists to figure out what's best and just marking that that lane indeed is where bicycles belong.

Motorists see a lane separator and figure they can ride right up along it, because whoever is in that lane is safely out of the way (and if you hit 'em, it's their fault for being out of their lane). Look, 2 lanes, same way, different ways, doesn't matter. I'm in my lane, if the next car clips me he was out of his lane now pay for my car. It's the same with bikes: bike lane, it's fine.

Enough of that. The right lane is shared, you figure it out, don't hit people.

unterhausen

it does seem like there is some latitude in the licensing laws that would allow a board to abuse its power. However, it seems like if that interpretation held, these licensing laws would be in clear violation of the First Amendment.

In Pennsylvania, the maximum penalty is $1000 and a 3 month sentence. Seems fairly severe in comparison to the severity of the crime in this case. I really don't see why there isn't a simple clause that says you can do any kind of engineering work as long as you are not representing yourself as a licensed engineer.

alhedges

This is ridiculous. It may even violate the First Amendment.

The comparison to practicing law without a license fails. *Anyone* can give legal advice (and we'd have to lock up half the population if they couldn't). What nonlawyers can't do is hold themselves out as a lawyer, represent someone else, or perform legal work for other people.

But anyone can represent themselves in court, and anyone can go before a board and present brilliant (or incredibly stupid) legal arguments to the board for or against, well, anything. The fact that the nonlawyers cited cases, or wrote something in such a way that others might think it was written by a lawyer does not mean that they are practicing law without a license.

The same is true with medicine - non-physicians give medical advice all the time. "Mothers" are particularly bad. Non-physicians can also go in front of any panel or board and argue for or against anything using (or misusing) actual medical research. They're not practicing medicine without a license.

So the fact that a citizen presents a document at a public hearing that is such quality that it appears to have been written by an engineer should not constitute practicing engineering without a license.

lostarchitect 

As someone who as a Master of Architecture degree and who works for a Registered Architect--but who does not have a license to practice architecture (yet) myself, I think I can clear this up.

You are not posing as an architect or engineer unless you literally claim you are one. Period. Susie Homemaker is allowed to do drawings of her dream kitchen. Interior designers are allowed to draw buildings. Johnny student is allowed to do drawings of bridges. None of these people are architects or engineers, and they're not claiming to be.

If this guy called himself an engineer in the report or in front of the committee members--fine, case closed. If he didn't, he's in the clear.

There have actually been cases where persons like myself (with architecture degrees, but without licenses) were taken to court for claiming they were "architects." They won, because they were making the claims informally--as in, I have a lot of architecture training, experience, and a master's degree. I'm an architect, but I don't have a license to practice. I'm an architect. I am not a Registered Architect.

BikeLawyer

The two guys submitted their report directly to the City Engineer, among others ... no "staff member" middleman here - they gave their thoughts directly to the guy with the power and credentials to review them, analyze them and "engineer" them.

Steve Magas

sggoodri

Then they were doing exactly the right thing - taking their layperson ideas and running them by an engineer for professional evaluation. That's how the process is supposed to work. In most cities, the engineer will thank them for the care and detail they put into their communication, and if the material stands up to technical scrutiny, will ask them if he can use the material when presenting the concept to others. This is exactly what has happened to me - planners and engineers in Cary and Raleigh have taken my photos and diagrams and used them in their presentations to decision makers, after having decided that the work was accurate and valuable.

In some cities, the staff liason for the bike/ped commission is a city planner, and in others it is an engineer. In Raleigh, both an engineer and a planner attend their commission meetings; an engineer is always in the loop, and always evaluating ideas (and photos and diagrams) produced by the untrained commission members or public at large.

sggoodri

If these folks were unlawfully striping guerrilla bike lanes on existing roads at midnight, that would be another story....

tadawdy

Someone made a comment about licensed professionals wanting to create artificial scarcity...and they were shot down. I agree. In addition, it's about creating the illusion of exclusivity. They don't want you to think you could do their jobs, and they want to make sure you can't. I'm not saying that regulations aren't a good thing. I'm very much of the opposing view.

MD's don't like the idea of PA's or NP's because they they stand to take work away from them, and with less training. DPT's don't like those with master's (or heaven forbid those who got in with just a **GASP** bachelor's degree back in the day); Licensure for real estate agents? Please.

I'm really against the current educational system. It's extremely inefficient and costly. The whole undergrad/postgrad model is antiquated; when will we admit that the world has changed, and that it's no longer the case that just having any old degree is worth the price of admission? Do doctors really need to read Shakespeare? No, but the old guard thinks it means something. Stop kidding yourself if you think the standard model is the best way to train people for any career, and that it exists because it's the best way. Nope. The people who went before you had to do it, and so should you. They're the ones in control, after all.

So, yes, licensing boards have a place, but one of the biggest roles they play is in preserving the interests and values of their licensed members. often, that means making it more difficult to enter the field so there is less competition. once something becomes institutionalized, it's also very slow to change.

Cyclaholic

Where's your evidence to support this allegation in engineering?

unterhausen

then this whole episode is bizarre. Many firms have a staff of unlicensed engineers, draftsmen, and even non-degree holding technicians that produce work that is reviewed and approved by a PE. In fact, in order to get a PE license, you have to work for a decade under the supervision of a PE. By definition, the work that is done during this decade is "engineering" as defined by the engineering licensing laws, and also by definition these people are not "engineers." As long as this work is understood and reviewed by the PE, it's legal.

I think we should fax our state legislatures and tell them that these laws need to be carefully amended in such a way that the free speech rights of citizens are not threatened by thin-skinned civil servants.

This really isn't the case in engineering. There is no effort to force the vast majority of engineers to become licensed. It would be crazy to try to decimate the engineering staff of companies that have no statutory requirement for having their work produced by licensed engineers. Should licensed engineers try to do this, I predict that the licensing laws would be amended rather rapidly to preclude this from happening. Any state that did allow this to happen would see some of their most productive companies leave.

tadawdy

May not be as big a factor in engineering. It's just a feature of many institutions.

This is obviously difficult to prove, but the idea isn't my own. It's called creating and exploiting an information assymetry, even when the assymetry really isn't that big. It exists everywhere someone claims to be an expert, and claims you need to pay them to do something.

In engineering, the gap between how much an engineer is actually worth and how important he claims to be may be much smaller than in some other fields, but it's still there. I'd bet, just as there crappy lawyers and doctors, there are bad engineers out there.

In the case of an engineering board essentially going after people for simply trying to find their own information and coming to their own conclusions, rather than letting the experts give them the information that favorably frames the opinions of those experts, there's obviously a more personal reason than a logical one for doing so.

I work in a field that's full of misinformation, which exists for many reasons. That information assymetry I mentioned is in full force here, and I wouldn't deny it. I don't have to make a big deal of exploiting it, because I'm extremely well-informed and my clientele is generally from a group that values me no BSing them and just being open with what I believe are the evidence- and experience-based facts. I don't pretend to do what I do better than they could. I just do it. I generally appreciate when people try to inform themselves, because then they actually tend to agree with me instead of me having to bang my head against the wall just trying to get them to do what I want.

I can't understand the bizarre actions Bikelawyer detailed without believing there is some kind of personal offense and a vendetta somewhere along the way. My main point is there are many forces in play that ensure the system runs as it does that don't involve it actually being the best way to do things.

unterhausen

I'm sorry, but your other examples were rather flimsy as well. And it's taking this thread off-topic. There is a very real need for civil engineering projects to be signed off on by trained, licensed engineers. I would not be at all happy if this were to change, because then the "sanitary engineer" that picks up your garbage could design the next bridge you drive over. And the current system was put into place because things that weren't much more reasonable than that did happen

tadawdy

I did say there was a reason to have things like this in place. If the traffic engineers are wrong, and wrong enough to feel threatened by a group of citizens questioning their work, it seems it should be corrected.

The systems in place should never prevent people from questioning experts, and it shouldn't put experts in a place to stamp out dissent. There are plenty of people labeled as experts who are anything but. That doesn't seem off-topic, given it was what this thread was about.

I also disagree with you that the parallels in other professions are flimsy. I've encountered them. Not every professional is worth the paper their degrees and certifications are printed on. Everyone should be second-guessed.

If what doesn't apply to engineering very well, which it apparently doesn't, I stand corrected on that.

mercator

Some confusion in this thread about the definition of engineering. The specific issue about the MSCE designation is referred to as right to title, which basically says 'if you aren't an engineer you can't call yourself one'

The issue in Ohio sounds like a civil servant who doesn't like his designs being critiqued trying to use the regulatory board to shut his opponents up. In my jurisdiction, that approach would probably get some letters sent out and a hearing if necessary, but the complaining engineer runs the risk of a reprimand for making baseless accusations and could even be directed to undergo additional training.