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Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

nytimes.com

131–140 of 362 posts

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#131

People are seriously concerned with aircraft near misses when we let cars kill 45,000 Americans a year. Absurdity.

It's reasonable to monitor risk at an individual level. Considering one person's fuckup can affect hundreds of people directly, this is reasonable. The two concerns are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#132
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe ACT test scores have plummeted because these students have experienced 1-2 years of remote teaching, which might have been less effective than in-person school?

Per the comment thread, this doesn't have perfect explanatory power: drivers and ATC have also recorded statistically significant declines over the same time period. In other words: remote schooling may have had a negative effect on ACT scores, but all evidence points to it not being the only (or even primary) effect.

Regarding this thread, I really want to caution on the desire to automatically assign worse car crash rates to covid-19 infections, or any other specific cause.

Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own.

There are a lot more reasons that car crash rates can be getting worse. For one thing, they have been trending upwards since smartphones have become prevalent. Car crashes weren't trending down for some time before covid-19. Also, the number of screens installed on automobile dashboards is increasing every year.

Still, I won't automatically assign blame to smartphones or automotive screens unless someone at least attempting to use the scientific method weighs in on the subject, because our intuitions about statistics are often really, really wrong.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#133
post #60
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could also be the consequences of schooling during a lockdown.

People continued to drive.

A lot of people changed their driving habits significantly, and there was a period of significantly less driving. Many people commute much less than before. At some points, traffic was so much below the usual that several record breaking Cannonball runs were had that are unlikely to be broken unless there's a significant relaxation of speed limits nationwide.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#136
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the people who are concerned could be channeling their concern into solving the problem. Here, I am guessing, not many people can actually solve the problem, so we can safely be very concerned about both things simultaneously! It would be different if it were the same exact group of people and the same budget who are in charge of plane safety, as those in charge of the car safety. We can then scold them for w…

Stop making sense! It would be useful if the readily mechanizable aspects of ATC-piloting and driving were done by machine but with human-in-the-loop. The fixations with completely human, manual processes and the leap to full automation are both too risky. There is plenty of middle-ground to derisk and remove points where human-error is mostly likely to occur. TCAS has been an excellent aid. Perhaps an automotive "TC…

> Perhaps an automotive "TCAS" would also be useful.

Forward Collision Warning systems and automatic emergency braking are becoming common in new cars. The problem and solution spaces are pretty different, so I don't think applying TCAS directly would be helpful --- I don't think there's a chance of cars having transponders anytime soon, and certainly deer, cyclists and pedestrians are unlikely to participate in an active transponder system, and there's no opportunity for cars to pull up or sink. At the same time, TCAS does not instruct to reduce or increase horizontal speed.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the safest per mile, but not per journey. A nice comparison to other transport methods, including taking the bus, and the Space Shuttle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...

It really blows my mind that the space shuttle was really so sound and safe even though I want to argue that it could have been far better. I mean this compared to SpaceX stuff blowing up a bunch before it gets the kinks worked out - I don't remember seeing or hearing about any prototype shuttles blowing up but it was before my time.

Others here have addressed the question of whether it was safe even by space flight standards, but as to whether it could have been far better, the refractory-surfaces problem alone seems to have put an upper limit on that.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how that's related though

ACT test scores have plummeted too. Combined with what we know about the physical brain changes that can be observed after a single mild infection, it all paints a potentially concerning relationship with COVID.

The same as the PISA scores. PISA, which might not be well known is the US, is the International Student Assessment for the 15 years old students in the OECD (and non-OECD) countries. The PISA measures their ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. The PISA scores for 2022 is the lowest in the history of PISA and show a clear trend downward since 2012. The huge drop in 2022 scores can be explained through the longer school closure period during the pandemic lockdowns. But only partly. The increasing prevalence of mobile phone amongst children and their distractions certainly play a significant part in contributing to the huge drop in PISA scores.

Not necessarily related to the increasing number of air traffic controls incidents, though.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so if you're not the hiring manager, how do you know someone is a "diversity hire" though? Isn't it racist to just assume someone was hired as a "diversity hire"? Most importantly, people tend to hire people like themselves, if the hiring manager is white it's most likely they'll hire someone who is white regardless if they're more qualified, but I doubt anyone ever questions those hires.

That's the point. You should not know and should not take it in consideration but in the USA this is part of the application. I understand the whole point is to make sure diverse candidate are not discriminated against (and of course that would be a ridiculous thing to do), but it seems to have been perverted into caricaturical discrimination _for_, even favoring a diverse incompetent candidate over a non-diverse com…

> but it seems to have been perverted into caricaturical discrimination _for_, even favoring a diverse incompetent candidate over a non-diverse competent one.

That's a crazy claim told without any proof. I don't see any studies, sources linked in your comment. That just sounds like your own anecdotal perspective.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how that's related though

ACT test scores have plummeted too. Combined with what we know about the physical brain changes that can be observed after a single mild infection, it all paints a potentially concerning relationship with COVID.

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