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Existing vehicle design guidelines for fire safety can be found in government and industry standards and are often interpreted in product liability law suits. In this paper, the authors review the nature of the guidelines and conclude that they are inconsistently interpreted and insufficiently articulated for the optimization of fire safety design. Cooperation is also often inhibited by the differing perspectives of government and industry and the adversarial nature of the legal system. Clarification of design principles that are agreed upon by industry and government, and applied uniformly by the courts would necessarily enhance the safety of vehicles and efficiency of resource allocation. Because risk can never be fully eliminated, agreement can only be achieved if there is an understanding of “acceptable risk” to balance the motivations of safety and profit.