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The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

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Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#411

Post by eadmund »

mavhc wrote: post #281
m463 wrote: post #94

I wonder when a tesla will show up in a courtroom with a situation like this. I'm not talking about autopilot. I'm talking about the continuous (past ridiculous) removal of physical controls from their vehicles. For example, the original model S/X had dedicated controls for lots of functions - turn signals, gear shift, wipers, autopilot, steering wheel tilt, etc. On the steering wheel, there were two buttons and a sc…

The left scroll wheel can: play/pause/next/previous/vol up/down in Normal mode If you press the wiper button on the steering wheel it can change wiper speed Long press is a custom function When there's a call it answers/declines, mute/unmute, and ends a call The right one actives autosteer/tacc/fsd, adjusts follow distance and max speed There's 3 buttons for left/right/high beam on the left, and on the right, buttons…

My God, they’ve finally made Marcus J. Ranum’s comment reality: ‘If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles — but you’d be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.’

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#413

Post by leetcrew »

withinboredom wrote: post #392
leetcrew wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also destroyed my transmission by putting it in park at high speed. Worth it. absolutely not worth it. modern cars (ie, anything with abs and disk brakes) achieve maximum deceleration when you mash the brake pedal and allow the car to modulate the clamping force. using the emergency brake and putting the car in park just locks up the wheels. the whole point of abs is to avoid this. you destroyed your transmission…

This was most certainly not anywhere near a modern car. Further, it was a gravel road, which is a case where I'm not sure ABS brakes work better, but I could be wrong.

the first key insight here is that brakes can generate much more friction against the wheel than the tire can against any surface you're driving on. this makes the tires the limiting factor for stopping distance, not the brakes. the only exceptions to this rule are very old (like pre-1980s) cars, cars that desperately need new brake pads, and brakes that have overheated from heavy use on a track or riding them down a long hill.

the second key insight is that tires generate the most friction when they are allowed to slip only a small amount. different surfaces have different optimal slip amounts, but you never want to lock up the wheels completely.

gravel does make a difference here. abs is typically tuned for optimal performance on pavement, so it's at least theoretically possible for a skilled human driver to outperform older abs implementations on gravel. the average driver panic stopping is very unlikely to beat abs though. being a lower traction surface, it's also much easier to lock up the wheels on gravel. there's no reason to use the ebrake and especially not to force the transmission into park unless you know for a fact that the main brake pads are failing.

I'm sorry to completely beat you over the head with this explanation, but what you describe is extremely unsafe and I really hope no one reads that and tries it themselves in an emergency. the emergency stop SOP for any abs-equipped car is 1) fully depress the brake pedal, 2) focus on steering the car away from the immediate hazard or at least in a relatively straight line.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#415

Post by rootusrootus »

hn8305823 wrote: post #374
MichaelZuo wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not something that can be changed on airbus cockpits, since the nature of side sticks makes them impossible to be mechanically linked, unless there was some very complex motor system built into each stick that provided force feedback equal in strength to a pilot tugging hard on it.

The Cirrus SR-22 (the best selling general aviation plane every year since 2003) has mechanically linked side sticks. They aren't fly by wire like the Airbus but it shows they can be linked without a complex motor system.

> Cirrus SR-22

Are those really side sticks, though? They look much more like one half a yoke than the kind of side stick you'd see in, for example, an Airbus or an F-16.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#416

Post by jonah »

waihtis wrote: post #332
subroutine wrote: post #160

Interesting to see this on HN. I currently work for the company that redesigned the HMI/UI following this incident. Or rather, it's how my company was founded. In the aftermath, the US Navy Command in San Diego contacted several UCSD professors in the Cognitive Science and Psychology department who specialized in high-impact decision making under stress and cognitive load. The Navy was apparently impressed with the d…

Any good reading on this? Might be some interesting learning opportunities for (cyber)security monitoring, which is a total mess right now. Stakes are a bit less severe, but still.

Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things is a great intro to human factors and covers a number of high-stakes environments as well as more mundane things like door handles. Highly recommended reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#417

Post by proaralyst »

next_xibalba wrote: post #414

> every large aircraft in the world is equipped with a device called an IFF -- "identification friend or foe." This is weird, I'm sure I don't have all the facts. In a conflict, why would a military aircraft ever want to identify itself?

So you don't get shot down by your own air defense

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#418

Post by rbanffy »

subroutine wrote: post #160

Interesting to see this on HN. I currently work for the company that redesigned the HMI/UI following this incident. Or rather, it's how my company was founded. In the aftermath, the US Navy Command in San Diego contacted several UCSD professors in the Cognitive Science and Psychology department who specialized in high-impact decision making under stress and cognitive load. The Navy was apparently impressed with the d…

> our new CEO is a former Captain of the USS Zumwalt.

Wait! Wasn't the last captain of the Zumwalt called James Kirk?

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#419

Post by masklinn »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #379
quench wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unlike on a Boeing (at the time at least) where they're physically connected so you can't have contradictory inputs in the first place Air France seemed to manage it https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/air-france-crew-fought-e... Also glad to see that airbus are planning to put force feedback side-sticks in future.

> Air France seemed to manage it [on a Boeing] Hence my "at the time" bracket. Since then, newer Boeing planes have actually removed the physical connection between the sticks! Absolutely bonkers decision given the background. (I put "at least" at the end of my bracket because I wasn't 100% sure I rememebered correctly.) But maybe there is a good reason - e.g. like a sibling comment suggested, if one gets stuck.

AFAIK the 777 still has mechanically linked yokes. It has a breakout mechanism in case one of the controls gets jammed (allows freeing the other one), but it's not been removed.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#420

Post by immibis »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #243
immibis wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other good news, Mastodon is now so good a Twitter clone that you think it's Twitter.

until you try and follow or like the post and learn that the instance this was posted on has blocked your instance...

If it was Twitter, you'd be completely banned.
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