The fact that everyone made it out alive from A350 is a great testament to the design. Insane.
Eh, not really. Any passenger plane design is supposed to be able to evacuate in 90 seconds. They had several minutes (at least) to get off that plane before the fire spread to the cabin.
Looking at the videos, the plane was literally doused in burning jet fuel as it was decelerating at high speed. I still find that very impressive for a plane built out of ultimately flammable materials (carbon fiber).
Even when there was a rule that cell-phones were supposed to be turned off, studies showed that 20-25% of cell phones were still active (Possibly forgotten in pockets) - wasting time, energy, traveler patience, on something that was entirely theater (I don't believe there was ever a single incident associated with an active cell phone - which makes sense given the 10s of thousands per day that were powered on during…
I think the "no cellphones" rule is about minimizing distractions during critical phases of flight, not because a phone's radio is going to do damage to the aircraft. So a phone on but sitting in someone's bag is not the end of the world.
> the "no cellphones" rule is about minimizing distractions during critical phases of flight, not because a phone's radio is going to do damage to the aircraft
The cell-phone "ban was put in place because of potential interference to wireless networks on the ground" [1]. The distraction argument started making its rounds after the interference hypothesis was debunked.
Definitely better links than Daily Mirror out there, avherald.com unfortunately overwhelmed, but in terms of discussion: - Crazy how well the carbon fiber A350 held up given that it seems to have landed pretty much directly on a Dash 8 (RIP Coast Guard team). Looks like trading long term flammability for initial rigidity lived up to the design intent. - Excellent evacuation job, especially as it looks like on some vi…
> Looks like trading long term flammability for initial rigidity lived up to the design intent. What if a plane catches fire in midair?
It crashes? But honestly, how would that happen? And close enough to a landing strip to land evacuate the plane?
Admiral Cloudberg has their work cut out for them again... I always love their insights (not sure if it's a man or a woman) It's not really a miracle though. Just the system working as intended, and the many lessons learned from the lives that were lost in the past paying off. As an example: due to this accident with many fatalities, the process for fire on the runway has been improved considerably. In that case the…
Over 50%, sure, but 50% of a very small number. How many deaths do you expect keeping passengers from being distracted at these times would prevent? (I expect if you compare that to the number of people inconvenienced by the rule it's a terrible trade off.)
The number of fatalities and injuries seems minuscule because it's normalised over distance traveled. This makes sense, because air travel is the only way to make voyages over this distance. But it also doesn't make sense for the same reason -- it's stupid to compare a 6000 mile holiday flight with a 6000 mile holiday road trip, because people don't routinely make those. You're still more likely to get injured on an…
The statistics are also available as "per passenger-hour", which eliminates the speed factor. An 8 hour road trip is reasonable. An 8 hour flight is on the longer side.
Waymo is safer than a human driver already. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/googles-waymo-safe... Of course there will be locations where humans are required, but we can already start using computers in those locations where they perform better.
> Waymo is safer than a human driver already. Is that data controlled for environment? I.e. it must only compare Waymo driving with human drivers in exactly the same environment. Same road, same conditions, same time, etc. Waymo doesn't take any difficult routes.
Where I drive daily I constantly have to make decisions which no self-driving car system I know about can possibly do. They don't foresee upcoming gridlocks caused by you driving completely legally but blocking (again, legally) a car from crossing to a side road, that car again blocks the car behind it, which blocks the car in front of you from doing a left turn, which means that you can't move and unlock the gridloc…
What makes you think that a self-driving car cannot have similarly predictive algorithms?
There's nothing so far indicating that they have, at this point. Though I doubt predictive algorithms would work - there are all kinds of situations, all slightly different, and lots of them about understanding what someone else might be thinking. As I mentioned, I think we'll need general artificial intelligence to do this properly.
Waymo hasn't tried driving outside its comfort zone, so I'll argue that it's not demonstrated.
Have you driven in SF?
No, never been to SF, I have no idea how people drive there or what the conditions are. Except that they're very different from where I drive (except when I'm in the town centre) - roads without sidewalks, mostly no signal lights, snow a large part of the year, and other special conditions.