This Week in Product Failures
Software testers pay a lot of attention to software problems, but bugs and design flaws affect numerous industries. So as we wrap-up the week, let’s stop to consider a few product failures that we really wish had never happened.
Blowout Preventers Fail
Last week, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, tragically killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. Now the well is leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of anywhere between 1,000 and 25,000 barrels of oil per day (nobody is quite sure). One barrel of oil contains 42 gallons or about 159 liters, meaning a whole lot of oil is flowing into the Gulf.
Normally, oil wells are capped with a device called a blowout preventer (or BOP) that stops the flow of oil in an emergency. A BOP features numerous valves designed to close a well quickly, including a last-resort valve called a shear ram that should work when all else fails. It operates like a giant pair of scissors – cutting the drilling pipe and closing off the well. Now BusinessWeek reports that a study performed by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that 50% of shear rams failed at cutting the drilling pipe and closing properly. Current evidence suggests that the BOP for the Deepwater Horizon failed to close as well.
(The picture above was taken by a robotic submarine trying to manually activate the shear ram on the Deepwater Horizon’s BOP.)
Graco Cribs Fail
The Consumerist reports that Graco has announced the recall of 200,000 of their cribs because:
“the drop side hardware can break or fail, allowing the drop side to detach from the crib. When the drop side detaches, a hazardous gap is created between the drop side and the crib mattress in which infants and toddlers can become wedged or entrapped, posing a risk of suffocation and strangulation. In addition, children can fall from the cribs when the drop side detaches or fails to lock.”
So far, no children have been killed by this defect, but there have been several injuries.
Full Body Scanners Don’t Work
When the nation of Israel is not protecting their borders from deviant iPads, they spend a lot of time worrying about how to stop terrorists from getting on airplanes. So when an Israeli security expert announced that he believed that full body scanners don’t work, it raised a few eyebrows.
Full body scanners are the next big thing in airport security. They scan beneath your clothing (something that has upset a lot of people for other obvious reasons), giving security workers an unobstructed view of any guns or explosives. Now the Vancouver Sun reports that Rafi Sela, the former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority, has claimed that there are ways of easily overcoming these systems.
Of course he didn’t say how, at least not publicly. Still, this does not bode well for me ever again bringing more than 3oz of liquids or gels on a flight.
