Accountabullity Project

Section 2

Looking at the situation about the rise in revenue and the shortage of skilled

employees for the installation free of charge for all police goods, there is a range of

alternatives that present themselves as feasible solutions. My first reaction was to propose

to raise the product price so that more workers could be recruited for the installation to

cover this revenue increase. Still, if you increase your costs, there is always the

possibility of losing customers. On the other hand, my second thought was to go with

your suggestion of providing an instruction manual that would allow her to sell the

product to police departments and make them install the product on their own. This is

where the questions of liability emerge that trigger some concern. Yes, liability in the

Accountabullity industry has always presented itself as a problem simply because it

includes firearms. Still, when you encourage customers to make adjustments to their

firearms with your product, it dramatically raises the stakes.

Strict liability is defined as "absolute legal responsibility for an injury that can be

imposed on the wrongdoer without proof of carelessness or fault." Even if they exercised

all due care, the strict liability principle allows the plaintiff to sue an individual,

individuals, or a business for damages and/or injuries caused by the defendant. Ms.

English, one example I would provide is that of a trucking company engaged in "ultra-

hazardous activities," such as the transport of hazardous materials.  If the company were

to abide by any safety convention in the shipment of hazardous materials and did so with

no intention of malice or negligence and if the truck was involved in an accident without

fault of the defendant, the resulting damage to the accident or subsequent fire, explosion,
toxic smoke, etc. would be subject to strict liability. We have repeatedly seen this case in

the news, and because of this principle of strict liability, it is often a fault of the company.

The plaintiff would not have to prove that the defendant behaved wrongfully in cases of

strict liability, which is sometimes challenging and time-consuming to do so. This is the

most significant risk that comes from working with firearms. You will be entirely liable if

a product malfunction causes damage, even though all safety measures have been

practiced.

Ms. English, in the event that you generates a product installation guide to

accompany the software, unlike any warnings attached to the product that should be brief

and to a point, separate instruction guides and other means of communication, such as

safety videos, can be limitless in space and scope. With instructions, space constraints are

no excuse. So, suppose the manufacturer forgets to provide any relevant instructions or

says something vague. In that case, the plaintiff may easily argue that the instructions had

been misunderstood or confused and that they had sustained an injury as a result. The key

to ensuring Accountabullity remains within the letter of the law is to create a detailed

installation guide and instruction manual.

As you can imagine, it is challenging to write installation and instruction manuals

because it is complicated to predict every question a customer can have about a product

and to include every step possible to do something correctly. The writer leaves out a

critical step several times, either because they forgot about it or because they assumed it

was obvious that they didn't have to include it. The more experienced the writer is with

the item, the more likely they are to overlook anything obvious to them, but not to a
consumer, possibly. My recommendation is to have a team of product users on board and

have them work through installation and decipher the necessary steps. Allowing them to

help determine the steps and review the manuals can help others better understand the

future installation process. The Consumer Product Protection Guidance Commission and

the ISO standard have a protocol for checking the comprehensibility of instructions with

the CPSC Guidance, which states:

"Your instructions should be evaluated and tested to confirm that the instructions

are accurate and meet the goals you set forth when planning them. Conducting a fully

comprehensive "real world" assessments are difficult but are necessary to understand

what will happen when your instructions are in the hands of actual consumers."

Upon my research, none of this form of testing actually occurs because,

depending on the instructions' duration and scope, it is very time-consuming and can be

very expensive. However, a company should consider ways to check at least the

appropriateness of the manuals' critical information; it might not be necessary to do real

testing. At the very least, Ms. English, if you decide to take the direction of including

product installation manuals, we should have these manuals checked by qualified writers,

and skilled safety counsel as such professionals are trained to recognize vague and

incomplete statements and shortcomings in safety precaution descriptions. The user

manual's safety details should be cross-referenced from section to section and, where

applicable, repeated several times in various sections of the manual. It can be tricky

figuring out how to do it. At the end of the day, there are often communication problems

in the manual. Even if the company hires technical writers, the writers may not be
adequately knowledgeable about the equipment and how it can be used safely and

correctly to ensure that necessary safety information is appropriately given and specified.

The use of technical writers with technical experience or who can interpret precisely what

engineers say can also go a long way towards enhancing the language's understanding.

In this aspect, my recommendation is to ensure that the product installation

manual is monitored directly by you, Ms. English. A video installation guide will also

prove useful as you have mentioned that the product is easy to install, you only need to

make sure it is in the right place.

My suggestion to mitigate liability is to continue to perform all product

installation in house when it comes to the final decision but include a price increase to

cover these costs. Many consumers are used to paying for product installation. Most

police departments will prefer a company to take responsibility when installing the

product versus sheltering any liability if anything goes wrong and accidents are caused to

the parties. I also consider that a manual for product installation and safety guide is

definitely a fantastic idea but must be carefully designed and provide a vetted procedure

to ensure that all measures are accounted for. This would undoubtedly take some time,

but once it is in place, then maybe this could be provided by Accountabullity as an

alternative for police departments buying the software against compulsory system

installation.