Surely the key question has to be not what it has done for the status of the individuals who are licenced, or indeed the standing and authority of the associations that act as licenceing bodies, or for that matter who can sign stuff off, but if there is a real problem which it has addressed - are there less accidents due to poor engineering than there are in countries that have no such regulations, but instead require responsibility via the management, such as required by the health and safety at work act. So has the American improvement in terms of  plane crashes, environmental damage, machinery safety etc over the last 100 years been more or less that the improvement over the same period  that took place in say the UK ?

Looking at things like problems at 3 mile Island vs Winscale, or any of the far too many mining accidents in both countries,  I am not convinced that the difference in standards is as great as one might imagine, or even that in many cases an engineer registration system would have made that much difference.

Surely the key question has to be not what it has done for the status of the individuals who are licenced, or indeed the standing and authority of the associations that act as licenceing bodies, or for that matter who can sign stuff off, but if there is a real problem which it has addressed - are there less accidents due to poor engineering than there are in countries that have no such regulations, but instead require responsibility via the management, such as required by the health and safety at work act. So has the American improvement in terms of  plane crashes, environmental damage, machinery safety etc over the last 100 years been more or less that the improvement over the same period  that took place in say the UK ?

Looking at things like problems at 3 mile Island vs Winscale, or any of the far too many mining accidents in both countries,  I am not convinced that the difference in standards is as great as one might imagine, or even that in many cases an engineer registration system would have made that much difference.