Who is Responsible?

Michael C. More rightly condemns the "corruption and criminal negligence that has swelled over this the Belmont Learning Centers project" (Public Forum, July 17). He then goes on to blame engineers and designers for other project failures, such as exploding automobiles, brake failures, part failures on airliners, and the O-ring failure on the space shuttle. He could add the Y2K bug and blame it on programmers.

A close look, however, will show that, with rare exceptions, the responsibility lies with program managers who overruled the warnings of engineers, designers and programmers in order to save costs and schedule time.

Perhaps he contributes to this criminal economizing by paying more attention to cost than to safety when he buys products and services. I'm sure that for a mere $1,000 we could add a hundred $10 improvements to make an automobile safer.

Ernst F. Ghermann

Winnetka