Engineering Ethics - Social Responsibility vs. Legal Liability

I wrote my short essay on the ethics involved in the world of engineering, and as I was doing my research, I came across and short essay that I thought was interesting. One of the arguments that the author brings up is who should take responsibility for a design’s final outcome? Is there a social responsibility to the public? From my perspective as an engineering student, I think that it should be the responsibility of every engineer to think of the consequences that could happen with the production their design. In the design process that we are taught early on in our education, there is a step that involves brainstorming ideas, research, and realizing the requirements that need to be fulfilled with each project. In my opinion, this should also be a point when engineers ask people outside of the project about their views on the possible designs. An important question they should ask the public is how they think this will impact them, whether it is in a positive or negative way. Then the engineers can use that information to make the best judgment on how to proceed on the project. But once the project is complete, the rights to use that design are given to another group (like a company). What if there is a problem in the future after the engineer has been separated from the project for a long amount of time? Does the responsibility fall onto the company that is now using the design? Or is the engineer responsible because they didn’t think about the long-term effects of the design? What do you think?

http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/essays/design.htm