Oregon man fined $500 for criticizing red-light camera system

[MoValley John]

Not to engineers. My guess is he annoyed the hell out of them and they thought they would be "clever" in trying to make him go away. Instead they created a stink.

I do not have time to follow the context of the law you posted. Is that the specific law they cited? I will have to read the context once I get time.

I just spent 45 minutes discussing the nuances of this issue with one of my hunting buddies. He is a retired civil engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers. He still retains his PE. I wanted a two minute explaination, he being the anal retentive. detail oriented engineer that he is, wasn't finished when I finally had to hang up. Damn near an hour of boring ass nuances of who needs a PE. (He's the guy that engineered the awesome shooting tables we use)

Anyway, according to the guy I spoke with, he read the,article and a couple others and gave this opinion. The guy was engaging in traffic engineering. Traffic engineering is a discipline within civil engineering and without question, you need your license to operate as a traffic engineer. He further stated that by submitting plans and claiming himself as an engineer, the guy in Oregon opened himself up.

He then went on a litany of who can be called an engineer, why and when. He detailed the process of earning your PE, who needs it and why. At this point I was ready to shoit myself in the head. But we weren't done. Here's one nuance, he mentioned,you don't need a PE to design small electronics, computers and such. But if you design power supplies within the building that houses those electronics, you do. Automotive engineers don't need PE's, but if you design a road,, bridge pr tunnel, you do. He went on and on and on..............

[Kung Wu]

I just spent 45 minutes discussing the nuances of this issue with one of my hunting buddies. He is a retired civil engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers. He still retains his PE. I wanted a two minute explaination, he being the anal retentive. detail oriented engineer that he is, wasn't finished when I finally had to hang up. Damn near an hour of boring ass nuances of who needs a PE. (He's the guy that engineered the awesome shooting tables we use)

Anyway, according to the guy I spoke with, he read the,article and a couple others and gave this opinion. The guy was engaging in traffic engineering. Traffic engineering is a discipline within civil engineering and without question, you need your license to operate as a traffic engineer. He further stated that by submitting plans and claiming himself as an engineer, the guy in Oregon opened himself up.

He then went on a litany of who can be called an engineer, why and when. He detailed the process of earning your PE, who needs it and why. At this point I was ready to shoit myself in the head. But we weren't done. Here's one nuance, he mentioned,you don't need a PE to design small electronics, computers and such. But if you design power supplies within the building that houses those electronics, you do. Automotive engineers don't need PE's, but if you design a road,, bridge pr tunnel, you do. He went on and on and on..............

Right, he is an engineer and knew what was up. See ... not nuance to the engineer.

But to YOU ... oooh my nuances abound!

I dont think this guy "submitted plans". I think he collected data on observable phenomena (non-natural), made some calculations to model his observations, then put forward a hypothesis that the system could be altered in such a way to be more efficient, ran some calculations to prove or disprove his hypothesis, and then submitted his findings to anybody that would listen.

That's not engineering ... that's science!

[jdshock]

Not to engineers. My guess is he annoyed the hell out of them and they thought they would be "clever" in trying to make him go away. Instead they created a stink.

I do not have time to follow the context of the law you posted. Is that the specific law they cited? I will have to read the context once I get time.

I didn't say nuance to mean it's unimportant or something. I meant it's debatable. It's not a slam dunk either way.

Read the decision. It's really very short. It cited the exact law I cited. I just copy and pasted the statute number into Google. I know nothing about Oregon law. They say he practiced engineering by calling himself an engineer and by disbursing "solutions" to the public. Keep in mind this is after he received a warning about the applicable law.

[SB Shock]

Anyway, according to the guy I spoke with, he read the,article and a couple others and gave this opinion. The guy was engaging in traffic engineering. Traffic engineering is a discipline within civil engineering and without question, you need your license to operate as a traffic engineer. He further stated that by submitting plans and claiming himself as an engineer, the guy in Oregon opened himself up.

Traffic engineers are in the bottom 25% of their civil engineering class. That what the P.E. who sits besides me in the Aerospace world says.

He then went on a litany of who can be called an engineer, why and when. He detailed the process of earning your PE, who needs it and why. At this point I was ready to shoit myself in the head.

There is nothing special or hard about getting a P.E. Probably the hardest thing is to get your engineering degree. For KS you have to take and pass the fundamental of engineering exam and then work under a P.E. for 4 years.

[SB Shock]

I didn't say nuance to mean it's unimportant or something. I meant it's debatable. It's not a slam dunk either way.

Read the decision. It's really very short. It cited the exact law I cited. I just copy and pasted the statute number into Google. I know nothing about Oregon law. They say he practiced engineering by calling himself an engineer and by disbursing "solutions" to the public. Keep in mind this is after he received a warning about the applicable law.

Maybe he had a fake P.E. stamp?

[MoValley John]

Traffic engineers are in the bottom 25% of their civil engineering class. That what the P.E. who sits besides me in the Aerospace world says.



There is nothing special or hard about getting a P.E. Probably the hardest thing is to get your engineering degree. For KS you have to take and pass the fundamental of engineering exam and then work under a P.E. for 4 years.

From what I was told, there four years of college, a test, four years in the field, then a final test. College would probably be the most difficult.

As far as traffic engineers, who knows? Maybe a guy was top in his class and all he ever wanted to be was a traffic engineer. I know a guy that is the president of a small bank. All he ever wanted to do was drive a truck. And not just any old truck, as a kid, this guy just wanted to drive a Kenworth cabover??? True story. I laugh every time I hear it. Not because he wanted to drive a truck, but who on God's green Earth ever wanted to drive a cabover?

[Kung Wu]

I didn't say nuance to mean it's unimportant or something. I meant it's debatable. It's not a slam dunk either way.

Right, me neither. I meant and only meant it is not debatable to engineers whether you represented yourself as a "Professional Engineer", which is a very specific license that nearly every engineer in the US is aware of. If he represented himself as PE, and he's not, he's clearly and flatly in the wrong. If he called himself just an "engineer" without "professional", then Oregon has a problem (with their law or otherwise).

[Kung Wu]

Read the decision. It's really very short. It cited the exact law I cited. I just copy and pasted the statute number into Google. I know nothing about Oregon law. They say he practiced engineering by calling himself an engineer and by disbursing "solutions" to the public. Keep in mind this is after he received a warning about the applicable law.

Okay I finally had time to read it. Yes, I agree with you, it's not as clear cut as one would initially assume. He is in the right, but has gone about it the wrong way. What he did was more applied science than engineering (he didn't really design anything, just come up with a new formula that purports to make traffic signal better somehow), and he should have just published the information in a journal instead of pushing it on -- and arguing with -- the government agencies.

I do agree with you that this is not a slam dunk based on that tactics he has used.

[giskard]

Interesting. That is probably why there is the argument. I read up briefly on this, it seems to me that the company's DER would be the civil engineering equivelent to a PE. Is this sort of correct?

That said, in the World outside of aviation engineering, which is where this case lies, you need a PE to act as an engineer, stamp plans etc.

While my company has an ODA, the engineers that are authorized under it are UMs (Unit Members). In a lot of ways they are like PEs, but there are some significant differences as well. The biggest difference is that when an engineer is working as a UM, they technically are FAA employees. I've also been told they are not able to obtain errors and omissions insurance like PEs can.

I would imagine that any heavily regulated industry is going to have some form of system for engineers to sign things off. I'm sure the automotive industry has to have some kind of similar system with as many regulations as they have to comply with as well.