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Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

thenationalnews.com

151–160 of 178 posts

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#151
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

He was able to procure helicopter parts, presumably he was able to procure a rope to tie himself down.

Yep, less of a parts and more of a culture issue w.r.t. the lack of safety mechanisms, though the difficulty in sourcing quality parts certainly played its part in this incident.

All the cars have seat belts, so it would’ve been pretty easy to obtain one compared to the rest of the parts involved here.

None of the auto rickshaws have seat belts, for example, and lots of construction workers forgo helmets. No one cares, and furthermore people exacerbate the issue by trying to fit as many people as possible into these vehicles.

It’s a miracle that people wear helmets from time to time, though it’s still quite rare for pillion riders and whole families try to sit on two wheelers.

Human life is cheap in India.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#152
post #68
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those OSHA rules are "written in blood" as they say - and there are reasons for "stupid" rules like seatbelts and such - likely he would be alive had be been solidly strapped to the machine (thought of course he could have died other ways).

There is nothing inherently safer about using seatbelts per se. In fact seatbelts can kill you. I have a friend that went out with his has car and a friend 20 years ago, they did drink too much and had an accident. He was expelled by the acceleration the car had(because he used no seatbelt) while his friend burned alive inside the car. What makes seatbelts generally safer is that it is a single point of failure, you…

Making the "thrown clear" argument in 2021 is bold if nothing else. Showing that there are circumstances where a seatbelt would be detrimental to safety does not disprove their overall safety. You could find examples of any safety apparatus being more dangerous in some select situations. People are choked by their helmet straps. Safety garments gets sucked into machinery. It's just the law of large numbers.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#153
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in college, one of my advisors was a control systems engineer. He showed me the matrix of PDEs for the helicopter & the control system. There was also a simulator where the height of the helicopter was fixed and you could just tilt the main rotor forward or back to move and you could try this with or without a control system. The helicopter was completely uncontrollable without the control system. In the simulat…

Nowhere near the same level, but one of my proudest moments in gaming as a teenager was being able to complete a single mission in Search and Rescue 4. It took many, many hours of futzing with the game interface, and even more hours reading up on helicopter controls on the Internet. Without the latter, I couldn't really understand what's going on with the controls. I know it's just a videogame, but it gave me a deep…

I haven't tried it myself but DCS supposedly has a fairly accurate helicopter simulator.

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/helicopte...

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#154
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a problem when people don't like to RTFM which contains all the warnings necessary. Which reminds me I used to play with my father’s power tools on my own when I was 8-10 years old. Good times.

In the modern era TFM includes so many warnings and disclaimers as to be nonsensical. When nothing had warnings unless it needed it you took the warnings seriously. When a screwdriver comes with a warning and internet commenters get whipped into a frenzy because some youtuber didn't preface an advanced topic with an introductory safety lecture you don't know what to take seriously and you are effectively on your own.…

This is oh so true. Any time I buy a gadget I make sure to read the warning labels. This is only because of its comedic value. I try to imagine every mishap and threatened lawsuit that caused the labels to be justified. Hilarious, and as you say, quite tragic. It's just useless letter clutter at this point.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

I read somewhere about the postal network in India and how it suffered from a widespread lack of organized addresses. If it's still true, perhaps this is a contributing factor to why it might be hard to keep up and achieve scale for eBay clones?

No logistics is no longer the issue. Arrival of amazon and Flipkart fueled lots of logistics companies, now it's all sorted and amazon delivers to even the remotest villages in India.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the modern era TFM includes so many warnings and disclaimers as to be nonsensical. When nothing had warnings unless it needed it you took the warnings seriously. When a screwdriver comes with a warning and internet commenters get whipped into a frenzy because some youtuber didn't preface an advanced topic with an introductory safety lecture you don't know what to take seriously and you are effectively on your own.…

This is oh so true. Any time I buy a gadget I make sure to read the warning labels. This is only because of its comedic value. I try to imagine every mishap and threatened lawsuit that caused the labels to be justified. Hilarious, and as you say, quite tragic. It's just useless letter clutter at this point.

I bet if you trained some AI on all the manuals and BOMs you could auto-generate some of them just using the BOM. Plug -> Don't use in bathtub. Bearing -> keep spinny bits away from person, and so on.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#159
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would assume that if you have the resources to attempt to build something that resembles a helicopter, you would have a way to source a cloth strip to tie yourself to the seat. Not trying to diminish the magnitude of the disaster, but I think your argument does not apply in this case

sorry, i think you don't get it - the point is that you don't have all the necessary things. Which things out of the missing things were really necessary - that is rearview 20/20. This time it was strip of cloth, other time it may be something else.

If you don't have all the necessary parts for your helicopter, you shouldn't be trying to fly it. Maybe there are things that you don't truly need, but this is a terrible way to figure which.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#160
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was able to procure helicopter parts, presumably he was able to procure a rope to tie himself down.

Yep, less of a parts and more of a culture issue w.r.t. the lack of safety mechanisms, though the difficulty in sourcing quality parts certainly played its part in this incident. All the cars have seat belts, so it would’ve been pretty easy to obtain one compared to the rest of the parts involved here. None of the auto rickshaws have seat belts, for example, and lots of construction workers forgo helmets. No one care…

>Yep, less of a parts and more of a culture issue w.r.t. the lack of safety mechanisms, though the difficulty in sourcing quality parts certainly played its part in this incident

Who doesn't want to live longer? I even know a local welder who went to local welding supply store and all they had was shade 11 lens, through which he couldn't see a damn thing and now he welds without any shade. That's the state of affair in India.

Sure in factories, boss doesn't pay for protective gears so the people who need the job have to do without it.

Most autorikshaws are not driver owned, they are owned by some guy who probably owns a bunch of them and rents it out to drivers. Drivers get penalty left right on road from traffic police and lose a lot of money to repairs, rickshaw owner, fuel theft etc. At the end not much is left for the driver let alone for safety installs.

As people become richer they stop using rickshaw and drive their own cars.

Lot of people don't wear helmet because it's hot and humid in India and its really hard to wear it in 38*C in bright sun on 70% RH.

An average person in India has so many problems, the general mood is agitated and forgetful as a result. Most look for escapes and might not even be paying attention to things on road.

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