Risks and implications for decision making processes associated with existing design codes or their non-existence

Buckling phenomenon is a perplexing and unresolved issue in many safety critical structures, and it has been heavily regulated. The paper highlights the risks to decision making processes due to growing tendencies of eliminating from public domains disastrous events through confidentiality arrangements, erosion of existing human know-how, and falling standards of education. It is illustrated how existing, natural feedback routes to improvements of product design is broken by the imposition of legal, damage recovering, and court proceedings. All of this can lead the modern, automated support system to be blindfolded and unaware of harmful consequences when stability loss strikes.