Hope trains make a comeback soon
Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
271–280 of 362 posts
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#272People are seriously concerned with aircraft near misses when we let cars kill 45,000 Americans a year. Absurdity.
50% of accidents are single vehicle accidents that involve drugs or alcohol. It's more if you add in youth an inexperience. So, _most_ vehicle deaths are self-inflicted. 16% are pedestrians. They usually get hit from behind, and even if they don't, almost always at night. 16% are motorcycles. I ride. I love riding, but the reason for that statistic is obvious. There's zero safety margin when you're on one. Finally, t…
I have always wondered about the details behind the annual traffic fatalities stat and this is very clarifying. Thanks for sharing.
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#273There's an increase in incidents because ATCs are overworked and understaffed. The knee-jerk reaction is to try to automate the work away. A few problems with that kind of thinking: - Automation already exists - e.g., the collision detection warning mentioned in the article. I don't know much about air traffic control but I imagine there's some element of defense in depth. ATCs dozing off or running on fumes won't ca…
> Plenty of software teams have on-call rotations to cover production services. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the cloud but this is what you are really paying for. The value proposition of the cloud is infrastructure-oncall-as-a-service.
You usually still need someone oncall who determines whether it’s a cloud problem or your bug.
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#274My Etihad flight from North America increased 3 fold compared to pre corona, I am not sure what people in important roles are paid so less with environment so toxic
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I followed road traffic safety since 2020 closely (and have submitted and posted about it here) and traffic fatalities is slowly coming down since 2020. My hypothesis about it was that the empty roads in 2020 caused drivers to degenerate in terms of road manners. For example, deaths per mile actually increased in 2020 despite people driving fewer miles which suggests people drove less safely. On the other hand this a…
I’ve noticed a pretty drastic decline in driving behavior around here. We’re seeing a LOT more just absolutely insane drivers doing things you’d only see in the worst of compilations a few years ago. Something happened during Covid that made people just not care anymore. Also doesn’t help that cops are not pulling people over as much as they should. Watched someone just yesterday fly through a red right in from of a…
Early in the pandemic some places stopped requiring road tests to get a license. There are probably quite a few drivers on the road that would never have passed.
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
> 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. People’s tolerance levels and general concern for other humans plummeted in the post covid times. The warning signs about acceptable behaviour in supermarkets, medical practices and restaurants proliferated. I don’t know how you measure that effect though.
I worry that people may just feel like we're doomed and it's causing some to lose it.
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lack of automation is causing ATC work to be stressful. People orchestrating complex procedures over a shared vhf radio channel is inherently hard and error prone. Which is why it involves people endlessly confirming and double checking known bits of information. Automation could simplify that a lot and remove a lot of the uncertainty. Making communications easier might save some lives. A lot of accidents are cau…
They've been talking about automated ATC for at least 20 years now, in part for getting the benefit of more flights arriving and departing per hour than humans can safely manage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta...
I'm sure it would be done better if implemented over audio, but the image of a frustrated pilot yelling "REPRESENTATIVE! REPRESENTATIVE!!!" just came to mind.
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#278The US has developed a strong culture of believing that government is always the problem and government workers are always lazy and overpaid. And so cutting funding to these kinds of services becomes an easy sell. The problem is our society depends on these government employees. It’s no different than nursing, teaching, and many other professions - disparage it enough and eventually you’ll succeed in making no one interested.
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does a technical gas supplier factor into the life of today's teenagers? I'm genuinely curious. Is our hypothetical 12yo person learning tig welding on a side?
Nitrous oxide is a popular inhalant. It's reasonably safe despite the usual hysterical claims, and it's unregulated in most countries, possibly because regulating it would drive users towards more harmful inhalants like glue and petrol.
Nitrous oxide is certainly less harmful than many recreational drugs but it can cause nerve damage in some chronic users.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2023/smd/young-people-with...
Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not safe at all. In my country there are many people who have destroyed their brains using it. I would say even drugs like cocaine are safer.
It's just as safe as choking yourself, the gas itself isn't causing any damage, but the oxygen deprivation may. That's already an improvement over many other drugs, where the active ingredient is actively harmful.
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