Interesting lawsuit: Air Canada vs. Airbus

[jwocky]

Well, yes, flying automatic cabs ... and then one of them crashes into some residences and then what? See, what always worries me is the human mind, because that is what is behind all this technology. For example:

In 1912, the Titanic went down. Well, some theories aside, it wasn't actually the Titanic but her sister Olympic, the technical problems would remain the same anyway. The bulkheads were not high enough for an impact that far forward. What happened was, that through the leak in the forward compartment, the bow was pulled down and the water was able to flow over the bulkheads into the following compartments, thus basically flood the ship from forward to back.
Now here are some interesting but widely unknown details:

1.) The Titanic actually remained afloat for more than two hours after the impact. While she was often compared with the Lusitania and judged an engineering failure, the Lusitania, when she was torpedoed in 1915 b y a German sub, she took damage that was actually smaller and more contained than the damage the Titanic took in 1912 ... still, she went down in 18 minutes.
The basic recognition here is, different models of basically the same technology are more or less vulnerable to different kinds of failure/damage. The Titanic would have probably survived what killed the Lusitania and the Lusitania would have probably survived what killed the Titanic. Of course, if the Titanic would have had a water tight safety deck like the Lusitania, she would have been able to survive both damage situations. But that would have come at costs in weight, volume, escape routes from the lower decks ... so it would have opened the door for another third damage situation leading into total disaster. Every technical solution comes at a price.

2.) Here is another one. Seaman Fleet recognized the iceberg at the last moment and rang a warning bell ... the officer of the watch asked by phone what they saw, Fleet said "An iceberg, dead ahead". Them the officer ordered to stop the engines and lay the rudder hard.
Now, here is the rub: Actually, a situation like this is in most training books for watch officer training and ... oh suprise, it was also for example in Royal Navy training books since at least 1850 already. You stop the engines, run them backwards if you have enough time, you give alert to clear the lower decks and the foreship, but YOU DON'T LAY RUDDER is you are not 100% sure to get free of the obstacle (doesn't matter whether it is an iceberg, a rock or even another ship). If you take the obstacle frontal, you lose one, maybe two compartments. If you turn and fail, you slit open your ship the length of four, five, even six compartments and go down. If your opponent is not an iceberg but another ship, you slit not only your hull open, your bow will also compromise several compartments of the other ship, so both have a good chance to go down (precedence case was actually the Empress of Ireland vs. the Storstad). Sooo, actually, not the technology failed here, but the training of the watch officer and the work procedures on board of the Titanic. In airfare, we would call this today a pilot error.

3.) So, after the Titanic disaster, the British Board of Trade reworked the laws under which the Titanic was certified. See, another thing, the Titanic had actually more lifeboats and a much higher capacity than the laws demanded. She also not only met all other safety requirements by law but went far beyond those requirements. But the laws under which she was certified were the last time updated also in 1850. The biggest class of ship were "ships over 10,000 tons displacement). The Titanic was a 45,000 ton liner. The laws didn't keep up with the technology. And now I look at FAA rules based on planes like a 737 and I look at a 747-8 and an A380 and scratch my head and wonder, does that look somehow oddly familiar?
Now, to make that worse, many of those new rules written in 1913 after the Titanic disaster, were abandoned in two steps, first the 1960s, then the late 1970s. The reason was, a new kind of ship appeared on the oceans: The Roll-On-Roll-Off or short RoRo carrier. You probably don't know most of them under this term, they sail as container ships and as ferry ships mostly. The significant thing is, they have big doors on each end and a long and wide continuous load deck or in case of ferries car deck. A giant room as wide and long as the ship. Which actually wasn't allowed by the rules made in 1913. So they had to cut the laws out for the sake of more commercial profitability. As I mentioned, the Estonia, the Herald of Free Enterprise, the Oceanic, the Moby Prince, all of them were built by those newer and diminished safety rules and with the exception of the Oceanic, those disasters cost a lot of lives.
Now, we think of course, that doesn't happen in airfare. But actually, after Swiss Air 111 went down with a fire on board, the investigators found out, the insulation material was not up to par, there were no warning systems. So, 111 went down in 1998. Between two and the whole four years into the investigation, the investigators suggested a lot of changes including to exchange the insulation material. Of course, newly built planes get never insulation material, but here is the rub: Many older planes still have the old one. So we hope, that they added at least the recommended sensor systems. Which of course don't solve the problem alone, because those sensors technically would inform the pilots that they are about to be burnt alive, but they wouldn't prevent such a fire.
What we can learn here is, good technology is not that much cheaper as well-trained personal. So, there is always someone who will decide, it is unlikely another pricey accident happens and if, the accident is still cheaper. Here is the rub though: If you are cheap on training, someone will most likely blow a whistle or, if bad things happen, talk about it. So, it is a lot easier to be cheap on the technology. So what Airbus sells is not just "no need for training", it also opens the door to other bad habits. Less human influence increases the control of management.

I could continue this, but the point I want to make here is, we, as mankind, were already several times on points like this. Of course, we thought each and every time, we are so much smarter than those before us ... and so, we did the same things and failed the same. Actually, we can even describe this kind of behavior in a costs vs options vs attractor-detractor model and prove with mathematical certainty, we will fail again if we go down that road ... but we can also prove, we as mankind will still go down there again.

[HJ1an]

Well, personal transports are much smaller, so when one of them does plow into a residence, there damage is quite a bit smaller than say, an airliner... I say just reinforce roofs.

Besides, I agree with you totally. As tech progresses, there is always 2 sides to them, and so far it's still up to us to balance that one out, and new things will catch us off guard and resulting in regulations in responses to it, which results in something else catching us off guard again from that, etc.

[jwocky]

1.) Well, yeah, but giving my German origins, I am still a big fan of beer gardens ... which have by their very nature no roofs at all.

2.) The problem is not that those personal transports have less mass ... the problem is, something with some hundred lbs of fuel is dropping down with considerable speed onto buildings or people.

3.) The problem is also, the single crashing personal automated flying transport is maybe not even the big problem. The problem becomes big however if you have some ten- or twenty-thousand of them out there when you detect the glitch. There were some big car recalls in the past, lets do another fifty-thousand urgent fixes and hope till we get that done, not another hundred of those things crash into houses and igniting fuel meets gas lines to the kitchen.

The basic problem is, we need a new mental approach to the whole subject, but then, we need that basically since the steam engine was invented ... oh, wait, actually medieval builders of openable bridges had already that problem. As usual with everything that doesn't change over such a lot time even everybody knows, there is a serious problem is

a.) everybody believes, it can't be solved. Mathematically, we can of course prove, it is a mere belief because you can only prove for an attempt ypu simulated entirely through, that it will "probably) work or not. You can't make a definitive statement about things, you haven't even thought of and since with every technology, the number of solution variants is finite but pretty big, nobody actually does that. So, the idea there is no belief is just belief and the probabilities speak against it.

b.) there are already known solutions but they cost money

c.) there are already known solutions but we failed to explain them to politicians in maximal three-syllabel words or spoke too fast and thus, there was never political support for them.

d.) there are already known solutions, but they would be too pricey because it was cheaper to buy politicians to not implement them.

See, we know, there will be never a 100% safe technology. Dangit, there will be also never a 100% safe fridge, a 100% safe can opener, a 100% safe book light or a 100% safe coffee machine. We don't even need to look for complex things like planes, ships or cars, there is always someone who manages to do something wrong with even the most primitive technologies. Which of course, water on Vincent's mills, means in connection with complex technologies, training is the only way to get it half way secure operated. 100% automation isn't. So, no robo cars on the ground and please no robo cars in the air ... and since we are already about, no robo transports under water or on the water either.