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

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

#281

Post by mikrotikker » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 5:15 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #246

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…

There are a lot of factors that really complicate this system. Enforcement focuses on the wrong parameters. Police love to remind us that, "Speed is always a factor." Well, it's certainly the most easily measured one. The trouble is, what speed is wrong ? Is it the 5 cars who want to drive 90mph on the freeway, or the 2 cars who want to drive 65 in both lanes? By obsessively enforcing speed limits, police have manage…

> People don't want to drive. People have to drive

I want to drive. I love to drive. It's one of my favourite hobbies. What better way to get out and see such a diverse amount of the countryside?

I frequently drive 4 hours through a mountain pass to the other side of the island and it's absolutely breathtaking.

Road trips are our preferred holiday.

There is no public transport in these places and if there was why would I want to spend time with a bunch of random mouth breathers?

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

#282

Post by Ulukaii » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 6:00 AM UTC

r_klancer wrote: post #255

psunavy03 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ah, I worded that badly. Ultimately the pilot is the decider as you say. I was getting at the idea that (so I am told) the day to day experience of piloting is very much about working within a regimented system.

Strongly reglemented: yes; however, the rules are cut out in a way that requires _a lot_ of due diligence and experience to make sound decisions. For instance, EASA rules so no problem whatsoever dispatching an aircraft with minimum fuel (fuel planning regs) and no alternate planned (alternate planning regs) towards a destination that has thunderstorms in their weather forecast (weather regs)... it is up to the flight crew to mentally "fusion" different regulations together and make sound and safe decisions.

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

#283

Post by sgjohnson » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 6:09 AM UTC

rft wrote: post #134

sgjohnson wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total loss of control basically never happens. I’ve been reading and watching a lot of videos on aircraft accidents and near misses, and I haven’t seen a single one where there truly was a total loss of all controls over the aircraft. Even in the case of Japan Airlines Flight 123 ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Flight_123 ) the pilots still had some degree of control over the plane after its tail wa…

Also see United Airlines Flight 232 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 which suffered a loss of all hydraulics and thus control surfaces. The crew and a check airmen who was aboard as a passenger managed to somewhat control the plane using engine thrust and managed to steer the plane to an airport before making a crash landing. They saved more than half the people on the plane. One of the harrow…

Amazing, I didn't know of this incident. Awesome airmanship.

> One of the harrowing details is this quote: "The crew contacted United Airlines maintenance personnel via radio, but were told that the possibility of a total loss of hydraulics in a DC-10 was considered so remote that no procedure was established for such an event."

Has this even changed? What can you even do in the extremely unlikely scenario of loss of all hydraulic systems? I don't think it's even possible to train for such a scenario. You are truly on your own. What would the checklist even look like? "try doing the best you can with engine thrust alone, and may god help your soul"?

As far as I'm aware, the engineering has gotten better (introduction of hydraulic fuses that keep a closed loop in case there's indications of leakage), but truly, what can you even be expected to do without flight controls.

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

#284

Post by roenxi » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 7:18 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #245

samtho wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think “blameless” and “shared responsibility” are mutually exclusive, in fact, they are two halves to this same coin. The dictionary definition of “blameless” does not encompass the practical application of a “blameless” culture, which can be confusing. The “blameless” part here means the individual who directly triggered the event is not culpable as long as they acted reasonably and per procedure. The “share…

When I think of “blameless” I think of “without fault”: https://www.wordnik.com/words/blameless But when I think of “shared responsibility”, I think of everyone as sharing fault. When something goes wrong, I think someone, somewhere likely could have mitigated it to some degree. Even if you’re following procedures, you could question the procedure if you don’t fully understand the implications. Sure, that’s a high ba…

> ... but I think it’s a preferrable to pointing the finger at the people who wrote the procedures ...

It is better to point the finger at the people who wrote the procedures. Their work resulted in a system failure.

If the person doing the work is expected to second guess the procedures, then there was little point having procedures in the first place, and management loses all control of the situation because they can't expect people to follow procedures any more.

Sure the person involved can literally ask questions, but after they ask questions the only option they have is to follow the procedure, so there isn't much they can do to avert problems.

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

#285

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 8:06 AM UTC

generic92034 wrote: post #202

tialaramex wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two things fundamentaly wrong with OPs comment:

1: That life boat maintenance is dangerous (anyway, for such a claim I'd expect numbers)

2: Directly comparing any death (!) happening during vessel maintennace and operation with lives saved during an vessel accident

Usually not worth further engaging with thisbkind of thinking online.

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

#286

Post by ta1243 » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 8:23 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #248

ta1243 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that measure a loss of 1 second would be $7k lost revenue. A 100ms outage would be $700. Reality is that revenue wouldn't be lost if you had a 100ms outage, it wouldn't even be noticed.

> revenue wouldn't be lost if you had a 100ms outage If that little blip cascades briefly and causes 1000 users to see an error page, and a mere five of them (0.5%) to give up on purchasing, boom you just lost those $700 (at least in the travel industry where ticket size is very high). Probably much more.

So I invest all that time deciding where, when and how to travel and don't press refresh when I see an error which is more than likely on my end?

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

#287

Post by josephg » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 8:28 AM UTC

foofie wrote: post #256

beAbU wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... does not motivate a strong response from society ... Is it not time things change? How many lives have been destroyed by shoddy software? UK post office scandal? Therac-25? Leaked personal, intimate or payment data?

> Is it not time things change? No. There is absolutely no use case for misuse of any mundane service or desktop app that comes even close to match the impact on society of an apartment building collapsing and killing occupants. > How many lives have been destroyed by shoddy software? In relative terms, if you compare any grievance you might have with the sheer volume of services and applications running 24/7 all ove…

Social media would like a word. The suicide rates of teen girls have tripled since the introduction of social media. To say nothing of the corrosive force on democracy and our ability to make sense of the world as a society.

A building collapsing might kill 10 people. A rare tragedy. Social media impacts billions. Even if you want to downplay the negative impact on each person, the total impact across the globe is massive.

Software has eaten the world, for good and ill. I think it’s high time we treated it seriously and took some responsibility for how our work impacts society.

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

#288

Post by defrost » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 8:36 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #287

foofie wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not time things change? No. There is absolutely no use case for misuse of any mundane service or desktop app that comes even close to match the impact on society of an apartment building collapsing and killing occupants. > How many lives have been destroyed by shoddy software? In relative terms, if you compare any grievance you might have with the sheer volume of services and applications running 24/7 all ove…

Social media would like a word. The suicide rates of teen girls have tripled since the introduction of social media. To say nothing of the corrosive force on democracy and our ability to make sense of the world as a society. A building collapsing might kill 10 people. A rare tragedy. Social media impacts billions. Even if you want to downplay the negative impact on each person, the total impact across the globe is ma…

> The suicide rates of teen girls have tripled since the introduction of social media.

In what country? In what year comapred against what base year?

Disclaimer - not Australia anytime betwwen 1910 and now:

https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/de...

In the USofA:

    Adolescent suicides rose from 8.4 per 100,000 during the 2012-2014 timeframe to 10.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2018-2020, according to the new edition of America's Health Rankings Health of Women and Children Reportopens in a new tab or window from the United Health Foundation.

https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2022-he...

So if it tripled there then, teasing out just teen girls, there must have been a reference point from which it tripled ...

Or is this just over zealous hyperbole?

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

#289

Post by npteljes » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 9:15 AM UTC

MBlume wrote: post #265

npteljes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have thought a lot about this cognitive dissonance. I think that there are several differences to the two issues, and so, in people's attitude towards it too. One, I think, is that flying is something that is being done to us, and driving is something that we do ourselves. So the agency, the point of view is very different. Something bad happening while being passive is much more horrifying because of the power…

If you're a child, or someone too disabled to drive, driving is consistently something being done to you

I don't think that this is relevant, when discussing the cognitive dissonance between car and plane accidents, on the population scale.

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

#290

Post by izacus » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 9:17 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #287

foofie wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not time things change? No. There is absolutely no use case for misuse of any mundane service or desktop app that comes even close to match the impact on society of an apartment building collapsing and killing occupants. > How many lives have been destroyed by shoddy software? In relative terms, if you compare any grievance you might have with the sheer volume of services and applications running 24/7 all ove…

Social media would like a word. The suicide rates of teen girls have tripled since the introduction of social media. To say nothing of the corrosive force on democracy and our ability to make sense of the world as a society. A building collapsing might kill 10 people. A rare tragedy. Social media impacts billions. Even if you want to downplay the negative impact on each person, the total impact across the globe is ma…

Not to mention building software that decides who gets health care, insurance or mortgage and discriminates based on bugs and faulty premises. And we're not even at Tesla killing people with software bugs.