Single pilot 797

Autothrust Blue said:
It is fail-passive, though; look at the accident that they had out in the Bay, where the road markings were sufficiently lousy and ambiguous that Autopilot happily steered into a highway barrier at high speed. The difficulty will lie in making sure a human operator does intervene when it is warranted. (Which is infrequent but spectacular.)
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No system will eliminate all accidents. But this is simply an exercise in statistical analysis. And I’m sorry, but the humans lose out on that one. Big time.
 
SlumTodd_Millionaire said:
No system will eliminate all accidents. But this is simply an exercise in statistical analysis. And I’m sorry, but the humans lose out on that one. Big time.
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Agreed. And there's enough other systemic issues (bad Bay Area roads, for starters) that can share in the blame. (It won't stop people from trying to eliminate accidents. At least it shouldn't.)

Specific to that accident:

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I used to live not-too-far from there and had to drive that split on the regular; it was uniquely crappy then in terms of its layout and markings, even by Bay Area standards and I'm sure it won't ever change for a whole bunch of reasons. I'm not surprised that an artificial intelligence (or, two of them) was misled by the arrangement and the markings either; plain old ordinary human intelligence gets misled there all the time, but even dumb humans can mostly steer around things.

Someone crashed the impact attenuator at that interchange not long before that TSLA whacked into it at high velocity, and it was removed before the accident pending replacement by CalTrans.

(I'm still surprised that Autopilot doesn't at least try to enforce speed limits.)
 
ppragman said:
To be fair, the same could be said about us flying.
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Well, I’m a big advocate of automation, as you might remember. The difference in aviation, at least right now, is that the pilots aren’t there primarily for the act of physically operating the appliance. They’re there to make complex decisions and deal with complex emergencies. AI will eventually be able to deal with such things. But we we aren’t there yet. Driving is a completely different scenario. It’s all about physically operating the appliance. Computers just do a better job of that now that the computing power and sensors are available and economical.
 
SlumTodd_Millionaire said:
No one would buy it if it did. That was one of the first things I checked when I started researching it. No way I’d buy a car that told me how fast I’m allowed to go.
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This one is going to be an irreconcilable difference for us, I'm sure. I'm merely surprised that an automated system goes "Forty-five limit and you want to do 90? Have at it!"

(everyone within a 30nmr of Chicago does instinctively +15 anyway)
 
Autothrust Blue said:
This one is going to be an irreconcilable difference for us, I'm sure. I'm merely surprised that an automated system goes "Forty-five limit and you want to do 90? Have at it!"

(everyone within a 30nmr of Chicago does instinctively +15 anyway)
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Why would that surprise you? Does the Airbus not allow you to do 300 at 2,000 ft if you want?

Decisions should be made by people. Physical manipulation of the controls should be done by machines.
 
On the Tesla.

It will attempt to alert you of speed limits, but you can override them to a certain extent.

If you try to set it to cruise at 100mph in a 65mph zone, it’s not going to do it.
 
Derg said:
On the Tesla.

It will attempt to alert you of speed limits, but you can override them to a certain extent.

If you try to set it to cruise at 100mph in a 65mph zone, it’s not going to do it.
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It's good.

Speed • kills. Most of the people hauling ass on the road haven't seen what happens to a human body during a car accident. If they did they'd probably slow the hell down.

We should all slow down, one to save fuel (it's better for the environment) and two, because it's way safer to go slower.
 
ppragman said:
It's good.

Speed • kills. Most of the people hauling ass on the road haven't seen what happens to a human body during a car accident. If they did they'd probably slow the hell down.

We should all slow down, one to save fuel (it's better for the environment) and two, because it's way safer to go slower.
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While better equipment can overcome the reaction time issues, ain’t no getting around KE=0.5MV^2
 
ppragman said:
It's good.

Speed • kills. Most of the people hauling ass on the road haven't seen what happens to a human body during a car accident. If they did they'd probably slow the hell down.

We should all slow down, one to save fuel (it's better for the environment) and two, because it's way safer to go slower.
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I’m okay with the risk. And with self-driving cars, the risk will become almost non-existent.

FYI, Tesla will let you do whatever speed you want up to 90.
 
The current commercial aviation system is extraordinarily safe and already affordable. There should be zero tolerance for mucking that up with any advancement. While technologically feasible, the burden of proof is huge.
 
Beaker said:
The current commercial aviation system is extraordinarily safe and already affordable. There should be zero tolerance for mucking that up with any advancement. While technologically feasible, the burden of proof is huge.
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Don't Ever Let Technology Advance!

I think it's likely that, within my lifetime if not my career, we'll see single-pilot. I also think it can be done safely (though I still prefer no-pilots to one-pilot). And as far as the labor argument...Man has nothing to fear from automation as long as the man who tends the automation is adequately compensated, and it's on us - as always - to prove our worth.
 
How do you guys think a pilotless airplane would handle a simultaneous ADSB and GPS failure with no one up there to do anything? Not like that happened to a bunch of airplanes this past week or anything... :oops:
 
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