Rules - to follow or not to follow, that is the question

[dtengineering]

I love the photo of Dean Kamen making a set of bumpers illegal. It would have been entirely justified for an inspector to rule those bumpers illegal regardless of whose signature it was... but there is a point where discretion becomes important.

And that is why I would like to add one comment to the commentary on 488's bumpers that, while not particularly relevant to their legality, might help inform the discretion that was exercised in Seattle, at least.

488 could easily have fixed the bumpers. Their team, and mentors, are great at fixing problems. In fact, they spent a good chunk of the weekend fixing problems for many, many other teams. In addition to doing all the good, helpful things that top notch veteran FRC teams do, they also provided the machine shop and the crew to run it. If they absolutely HAD to fix those bumpers, they could have pulled a couple of their mentors from the machine shop, had them run out and get some new fabric, and had the bumpers fixed in a matter of hours. Instead, the mentors remained hard at work, helping teams with more significant problems, and less significant experience and resources, get their machines up and working. I think it was a good use of resources.

There were also a few less experienced teams who had done their blue bumpers up with black numbers, that... in Atlanta... would have been sent back for not being in a sufficiently contrasting colour. (At least if I were the inspector, they would have.) But given the amount of work that was going in to get struggling teams up and running, and have 100% of the kids get a chance to play the game, it probably made sense to focus on the "big picture" first.

At least those were the thoughts that I had when considering why the LRI might have exercised discretion in this case. It probably wasn't the call that I would have made, but I can understand why it was a good call to make.

Jason

P.S. Ironically we were (at first) asked to "fix" the mitred corners on our bumpers... at least until we showed our inspector that the rules had been changed to allow "bevelled" corners this year. It just goes to show that inspectors can get caught by rule changes, too. It's a tough job!