The politics of non-responsibility

I often find it amazing that we talk about people being accountable for their actions, then create laws that protect business people from being accountable.

A good example of what happens now happened a few years ago.

The manufacturer of the bullet proof vests that knew their vests were degrading over time and that they were starting to fail. Did they inform the police departments that had purchased the vests several years before? No? What did the the top executives of the company say? When cops start bleeding then they will know. Several police officers died before they told their customers about the problem.

For me this should be involuntary man-slaughter. If they told their customers about the problem before anyone had died. Fine, then the people would have known the vests may not be as good as they should be and may have been a tad more cautious.

Why can't we pass a law that makes the executives criminally responsible for their actions in cases like this? It would make it so they would want to get out detrimental information about their product instead of hiding it. If it hurt sales of the product so be it. But people have the right to know both the good and bad things about a product.