3 ms·
If you base your safety stuff off of a standard that must be met then you need to do your regulation as a sort of policing. I used to run into this sort of thin
by upofadown 7y ago
If you base your safety stuff off of a standard that must be met then you need to do your regulation as a sort of policing. I used to run into this sort of thing when attempting to design stuff to European standards. The North American way is to ensure safety by inspection by an agency. The European way was to leave it to the manufacturers and then penalize deviations from that standard when they came to light. So this could be seen as a move toward the European model. That seems to be the general trend these days. Which can perhaps be seen as a good thing as the various inspection agencies are being privatized.
The big difference here seems to be on the policing side. European regulators have the power to impose billion dollar fines and generate criminal charges against even executive level management. It does not sound like that is the case here. The companies will be considered innocent until proven guilty which really should be the other way around for safety related stuff.
- ahartmetz 7y agoThat is pretty interesting because it's unexpected to be that way around regarding Europe and USA. I suppose it varies by the kind of product in any case.
- upofadown 7y agoYeah. A relevant example of the EU way is the CE mark: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking
- ahartmetz 7y agoRight. AFAIK fake CE marks are extremely rare, by the way. Goods ordered directly from China may just not have CE marks, most everything officially imported has legit ones.
- tialaramex 7y ago"Fake CE mark" doesn't mean anything. The mark is a claim that your product is compliant. If you put the mark on something that isn't compliant the mark isn't fake, your product isn't compliant and you (or the importer) are liable as a result. A mark that's poorly made (smudged, bad dimensions, etcetera) might make consumers suspicious but from the law's point of view the question is only whether this seems to be a claim of conformance, and almost any mark closely resembling the official CE mark is clearly a claim of conformance.
- oasisbob 7y agoHow would you classify a CE mark which is obviously self-applied without regulatory approval? eg, PPE gear where the CE mark carries the EN # vs the number of the notified body. Very obviously non-conforming, I would go so far as to call it fake if the product has never been truly examined.
- ahartmetz 7y agoI mean the first case, CE mark on a product that doesn't conform to CE requirements.
- tialaramex 7y agoI'm actually astonished by the apparent claim that the European way isn't how it's done everywhere for low-risk compliance. I picked up a random piece of electronics with a bunch of logos that show it's authorised to be imported and sold in important jurisdictions. It happened to be a Netgear switch. It has a CE logo (from the European Union) and an FCC logo (from the US). For the CE logo Netgear's people will have verified that it behaves in accordance with the relevant rules, as part of normal procedure for any product, and the sticker with the logo on just affirms to an importer that Netgear says this complies. Nobody outside Netgear will have checked it's compliant unless/ until somebody realises there's a problem. Only very high risk items in the CE scheme actually need checks by a third party, that's stuff like pacemakers where if it goes wrong you'll literally die. Is it really true that the FCC and similar US agencies have people at factories and ports across the US checking everything manufactured or imported is complying to their rules?
- oasisbob 7y ago> Only very high risk items in the CE scheme actually need checks by a third party It's not just pacemakers, pretty much the whole PPE category requires inspection by independent third parties (notified bodies). That's obvious stuff like climbing gear and equipment for work at height, maybe less so for certain gloves, helmets, eyewear, carabiners, rope, etc. Compare the checks for climbing rope, and the whole EN/US scheme is inverted. We have so few standards in the US market that we just piggyback on theirs.
- jacquesm 7y agoYes, the difference is that in the US you don't get to 'self-certify' for a lot of cases where in the EU you can. That puts the burden on the authorities to get it right, whereas in the EU you can expect a retro-active smackdown if you fuck up.