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Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

telegraph.co.uk

171–176 of 176 posts

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes drivers up to 27 seconds to return to full attention after using voice commands to make a hands-free call, turn on the radio or perform other tasks, according to two studies released Thursday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Traveling at 25 miles per hour, that would equal the length of three football fields. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8135f446be2e4922b27dc3881155e...

No link to the actual study, not even so much as a DOI. Never mind "make a hands free call" implies carrying on the call... I'm calling shenanigans anyways. What on earth is the driver doing for those 27 seconds? How are they determining "full attention"?

"Researchers measured the return to full attention by timing participants' response to a flashing light."

The description in the article suggests that the time was counted from the start of the voice command action.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#172
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend recently (several months ago) was fined because he trusted Google Maps to be accurate and drove into an otherwise unmarked (by the route he took into it) wilderness protection area. He got the minimal fine because he demonstrated that he'd tried to obey the law (showed that Google Maps marked the areas, but marked them incorrectly), but he was still fined.

Surely even without maps the problem is the same: the route is unmarked.

The maps exist and folks who go in those areas are expected to use them. Available cheaply (free?) anywhere you might get hunting supplies.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We don't need any more encouragement of device lockdown, treacherous computing, and the general erosion of ownership. Actually, we do, at least in this case. The majority of users don't know/care about flying close to airports. (See my other comments in the thread). From what I can tell, however, all the larger drones tend to have geofencing already, so perhaps the current de facto situation is adequate.

I'm sympathetic to the criticality of airport approaches, but also sympathetic to people flying drones above their own property to arbitrary heights while informing ATC (perhaps it's time to revisit that previous uncompensated aeronautical space grab). But this balance is orthogonal to what I'm arguing about. In any industry that adopts treacherous computing, it spreads like cancer. Phones, cars, entertainment, payme…

Fantastic comment.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes drivers up to 27 seconds to return to full attention after using voice commands to make a hands-free call, turn on the radio or perform other tasks, according to two studies released Thursday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Traveling at 25 miles per hour, that would equal the length of three football fields. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8135f446be2e4922b27dc3881155e...

No link to the actual study, not even so much as a DOI. Never mind "make a hands free call" implies carrying on the call... I'm calling shenanigans anyways. What on earth is the driver doing for those 27 seconds? How are they determining "full attention"?

http://unews.utah.edu/up-to-27-seconds-of-inattention-after-...

"Attention" isn't a binary; it's a gradient from full attention to no attention at all.

"With researchers in the car, the drivers were tested for the extent of their distraction, even as they kept their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel after hitting a voice-command system button. A head-mounted LED light flashed red every three to five seconds at the edge of a driver’s left eye. Drivers pressed a switch attached to a thumb when they saw the light. The researchers measured how voice interactions with a car or smartphone reduced drivers’ reaction times and accuracy at seeing the flashing lights. The drivers also completed surveys about their perceived level of distraction, and videos measured how much of the time they kept their eyes on the road, mirrors or dashboard."

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#175
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No link to the actual study, not even so much as a DOI. Never mind "make a hands free call" implies carrying on the call... I'm calling shenanigans anyways. What on earth is the driver doing for those 27 seconds? How are they determining "full attention"?

"Researchers measured the return to full attention by timing participants' response to a flashing light." The description in the article suggests that the time was counted from the start of the voice command action.

http://unews.utah.edu/up-to-27-seconds-of-inattention-after-...

That's not correct. "The most surprising finding was that a driver traveling only 25 mph continues to be distracted for up to 27 seconds after disconnecting from highly distracting phone and car voice-command systems, and up to 15 seconds after disconnecting from the moderately distracting systems."

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like a slippery slope argument. [...] it is the other way around: government has instituted a law saying they have to do it. Yeah, that's the point. When the technology has been demonstrated to work (even if badly) in some areas it's suddenly mandated in other areas. Now we have a technology that was so-so at blocking unwanted porn being used for everything from catching pedophiles to checking for intel leak…

>No, we don't want useless technological measures mandated that claim to block drones from airports, but fail to actually help in a real security context. Because those useless security rules have only one real purpose - banning civilians from inconvenient things. It's not useless. Do you fly planes? If you look at the youtube video I posted elsewhere in this thread you'll see that the guy wanted to fly near the airp…

Useless because it's billed as stopping terrorists. Let's be honest, consider ham radios; the mandated but easily bypassed hardware lockouts are more useful for market segmentation than preventing bad guys from broadcasting on ATC frequencies.

So as a convenience feature that told me I the conditions for where I'm flying, it'd be great. And then it'd only need to be 4-nines, and wouldn't have to have fail-proof lockouts, etc.

But as a major portion of the defense of our air fleet - no. That's ridiculous. If we're that worried we need to figure out something to actually make us safer, not add another perpetual layer of theater.

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