Penalties for a part falling off of robot?

[KarenH]

They called it at the Arizona Regional.

Sounds like a lot of laws these days. Some are sensible, some are crazy.

In California, truck drivers are now required to cover their loads. You would think that losing cargo and equipment off trucks would cost the companies so much money that they would have prevented it themselves, without a law being enacted, but apparently not. How many traffic reports say there is a ladder (or some other hazard) lying in the freeway lanes? And the tomato trucks in summer still lose tomatoes on the ramp curves.

But with a robot in competition, losing pieces isn't usually much of a hazard except to the robot. I wonder if FIRST was trying to get teams to build more robust robots (as if teams would intentionally build a weak robot), or if this is just another example of a rule that does not have optimum phrasing.

Or maybe it's part of their attempt to be "green"--the FIRST version of anti-littering laws?