Why you've never been in a plane crash • Hacker News Board

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#201

Post by psunavy03 » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:40 PM UTC

r_klancer wrote: post #182

bradfa wrote: post #96

Why don't we as a society apply similar safety culture to driving cars and trucks as we do to aviation? MANY more people are harmed or killed by automobiles than by aircraft per person-mile traveled. A small improvement in automobile safety could make a large impact on society. Many of the types of improvements implemented by aviation mentioned in this article, when applied to the automotive world, would look like im…

Strong Towns is attempting to change that with the "Crash Analysis Studio": https://www.strongtowns.org/crash-studio I can think of many reasons it's difficult, though: * The fact that accident investigations are designed to figure out which driver was at fault, for insurance purposes * The fact that road designers are shielded from liability (good, right?), but only if they can show they followed the standard design…

> I've heard that to be a pilot you really have to be comfortable with doing what you're told, all day long.

Quite the opposite. The Pilot in Command is ultimately the person who is legally responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft. While you are following ATC instructions the majority of the time you are in contact with them, you are also culpable if you blindly allow them to put you in danger. If ATC tells you to do something unsafe, the proper response is to say "unable" and then say why. As described in the article, there are safeguards to protect pilots acting in good faith, and this is also one reason why airline pilots are unionized.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#202

Post by generic92034 » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #192

mewse-hn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, even though you would very rarely need them, likely never for a vessel which operates close to shore, they must be maintained periodically because SOLAS, and maintenance of lifeboats is pretty dangerous because they're on the outside of a ship. So you may end up killing or seriously injuring more people by having lifeboats. Did the designers of the Titanic write this? You're arguing having enough lifeboats for a…

I'm confident that I did not design the Titanic, a ship launched before my grandmother was born IIRC, however yes, I'm saying that this trade might well not be worth it in the bigger picture, not for all the ships covered by SOLAS. Titanic is the sweet spot for wanting more lifeboats, they had a long time, but they were in the middle of the ocean and nobody was coming to help. If you go down very quickly lifeboats ar…

If the maintenance of life boats is so dangerous and even costs more lives than it is expected to save, then in my eyes it would be the right reaction to invest into safety procedures for life boat maintenance, not getting rid of life boats.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#203

Post by themaninthedark » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #58

defrost wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Captain of the Titanic ... Any decent accident investigation should highlight that the Captain was under strict instructions from the ship owners to break a record, wealthy influential owners that could and would destroy his career if he failed to push the ship. Good investigations identify causes with a view to prevent repetition of circumstances. Cases like these (Titanic, UK Post) strengthen the case for whi…

Among other things, the investigation into the Titanic accident gave us the requirement of having enough life boats for everyone and standards in how to evacuate a vessel. Captains being pressured by mamagement / organization to do hazardous stuff is a thing still, in aviation as well as in seafaring.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#204

Post by rpmisms » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

nayuki wrote: post #199

Great article. I agree a lot with the safety culture in commercial aviation and the commitment to investigate and fix root causes. Now can we please apply the same standards to car crashes? The same human errors and bad infrastructure keep getting repeated over and over again. And the problems are getting worse, with SUVs and distracted driving on the rise. See https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/ for a community that…

r/fuckcars has members who deflate and slash car tires that belong to vehicles they deem "too big". Do you support that methodology?

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#205

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

mazugrin2 wrote: post #194

psunavy03 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason it doesn't. The last thing any pilot or controller would want is to have something sensationalized or misconstrued and then spewed all over social media.

United Airlines used to have this back in the days where your seat had an audio jack and a few channels of music to listen to. Channel 9 was the audio from the cockpit. Nowadays you can listen to ATC from nearly anywhere by visiting https://liveatc.net/

I've listened to liveatc.net, and then took a flight in an Extra 330LS stunt plane and got to listen to ATC from an actual headset...

...and I can't understand hardly a word they say. Even having a slight idea of the phraseology from countless hours in MSFS and watching VATSIM streams on Twitch, when it comes to the real thing, they talk so fast and there's so much static that it blows my mind that anybody can understand them at all.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#206

Post by class3shock » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:50 PM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #82

That was a well written article. I think my favorite thing about it, is how it showcases the power of long term thinking over short term thinking. It also showcases an organization that was not using hope as a strategy. I think the focus on "blameless" is incorrect. It is a culture of responsibility that results in better outcomes and it starts with engaged responsible leaders. Blame is in many ways the opposite of t…

Rickover is an intriguing figure to read about in general. I've heard different versions of his "rules", one set located here:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kelly-robinson-phd-92842b6_ri...

Another I'll include at the bottom of this post.

I also just wanted to highlight two things. Not only did he create a highly safety conscious organization but an incredibly technologically innovative one that was born despite huge resistance from the US Navy. Think about trying not only to build a small nuclear reactor, something that had never been done before, but one that could be put on a submarine. Not an easy technical goal. And on top of that, aiming to complete this task in the face of resistance from the highest levels of the organization he made his life, including efforts to get rid of him entirely. He wasn't perfect but what he achieved quite alot. Definitely worth reading more up on particularly if you work more in the mechanical engineering world.

Second set of Rickover Rules:

Rule 1: You must have a rising standard of quality over time, and well beyond what is required by any minimum standard.

Rule 2: People running complex systems should be highly capable.

Rule 3: Supervisors have to face bad news when it comes and take problems to a level high enough to fix those problems.

Rule 4: You must have a healthy respect for the dangers and risks of your particular job.

Rule 5: Training must be constant and rigorous.

Rule 6: All the functions of repair, quality control, and technical support must fit together.

Rule 7: The organization and members thereof must have the ability and willingness to learn from mistakes of the past.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#207

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

moring wrote: post #8

Related: CAST analysis http://sunnyday.mit.edu/CAST-Handbook.pdf Intended to focus on maximal learning about all factors that contributed to an accident. It subsumes several approaches, including a blameless analysis and that each factor doesn't just have a single "cause" but that different factors form a network of interaction. Also nitpicking about the headline: You haven't been in a place crash because you wouldn'…

> Also nitpicking about the headline: You haven't been in a place crash because you wouldn't be reading this if you were :)

Do you mean to imply that being in a plane crash is certain to result in death? Because that's definitely not true. Even when they crash hard enough to explode, there are sometimes still survivors.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#208

Post by ibcj » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

fortran77 wrote: post #183

But I have been in a plane crash! An overshoot of the runway at Burbank airport that narrowly missed hitting a gas station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1455

Wow, I remember this! Glad you were a-ok. Would love to hear more about your story and your method of egress from that bird.

For those that don't know, LAS to BUR is the best way to get from LA to Vegas (save private) and always has been.

I've been on that Sunday afternoon flight from LAS->BUR many times; with the afternoon flight informally known as the Hangover Express and the morning flight known as the Stripper Express. Good times.

And FWIW, I still prefer FORTRAN over Perl any day...

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#209

Post by ylhert » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

nayuki wrote: post #199

Great article. I agree a lot with the safety culture in commercial aviation and the commitment to investigate and fix root causes. Now can we please apply the same standards to car crashes? The same human errors and bad infrastructure keep getting repeated over and over again. And the problems are getting worse, with SUVs and distracted driving on the rise. See https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/ for a community that…

The cognitive dissonance people have around this issue is astonishing. We are willing to ground the 737MAX fleet when a few people get a (surely terrifying) open air flying experience; but 44,000 people are killed on the road in the US _every_ year (and rising!) and very few people seem to care. In most age cohorts, death by car is the largest killer. In the US you have a 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car crash in your lifetime. Even simple and completely reasonable measures to reduce these insane numbers are seen as some kind of tyrannical affront to ones freedom (see the current CA measure to add speed limiters).

The car industry, car culture, and car centric thinking in the US and much of the world is totally out of control.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#210

Post by gav » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

ssl232 wrote: post #12

One of the most important pieces of legislation in the UK that helped improve safety in workplaces was the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which placed a duty of care on organisations to look after the wellbeing of their staff. One of the tenets is to take near misses seriously. According to a health and safety engineer in a course I attended, near misses are like gifts from the heavens, as they show you exactly…

One interesting read on the topic of near misses and High-Reliability Organizations is the paper "Going Solid", which has a great summary here:

https://cohost.org/mononcqc/post/888958-paper-going-solid