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The London Ambulance Service's Computer Aided Dispatch system failed around midnight - the cause is not yet public, but it is conceivable that the leap second o

The London Ambulance Service's Computer Aided Dispatch system failed around midnight - the cause is not yet public, but it is conceivable that the leap second of 2016 could have resulted in avoidable deaths. Yes, due to a software problem, but with real consequences.

feld 10y ago
Apparently some Cisco routers were crashing due to the leap second as well https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCvb01730 https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCvb017...
manarth 10y ago
The news is reporting a failure from 12:30am. It's possible that it might be due to the leap second, but given the 30 minute gap between the leap-second and the failure, I'd hesitate to ascribe causation just yet.
dx034 10y ago
A system failure in the busiest night of the year (and apparently the busiest night ever) can have many other reasons apart from a leap second. It occured at 12.30am which is probably around the time when call volume started to increase rapidly. Do you have any source for the avoidable deaths? The night was very busy which lead to delays for ambulance dispatch, but from everything I read, the control room handled the situation well and there was little delay due to the system failure.
- timthorn 10y ago
  > Do you have any source for the avoidable deaths? None whatsoever - I'm not saying that there were, nor that the failure was actually linked to the leap second, and I tried to make clear in my comment that the facts were unknown. I was suggesting that avoidable deaths could be a plausible outcome of a CAD system failing, and that the CAD failure could have plausibly been caused by the leap second. This was in response to the comment arguing that the only problems created were software, and I was trying to demonstrate that "only" software bugs can have serious consequences.
  - timthorn 10y ago
    There's now an investigation into the clinical aspect, as at least one patient died during the outage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38535946 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38535946

feld 10y ago

Apparently some Cisco routers were crashing due to the leap second as well https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCvb01730 https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCvb017...

manarth 10y ago

The news is reporting a failure from 12:30am. It's possible that it might be due to the leap second, but given the 30 minute gap between the leap-second and the failure, I'd hesitate to ascribe causation just yet.

dx034 10y ago

A system failure in the busiest night of the year (and apparently the busiest night ever) can have many other reasons apart from a leap second. It occured at 12.30am which is probably around the time when call volume started to increase rapidly. Do you have any source for the avoidable deaths? The night was very busy which lead to delays for ambulance dispatch, but from everything I read, the control room handled the situation well and there was little delay due to the system failure.

timthorn 10y ago
> Do you have any source for the avoidable deaths? None whatsoever - I'm not saying that there were, nor that the failure was actually linked to the leap second, and I tried to make clear in my comment that the facts were unknown. I was suggesting that avoidable deaths could be a plausible outcome of a CAD system failing, and that the CAD failure could have plausibly been caused by the leap second. This was in response to the comment arguing that the only problems created were software, and I was trying to demonstrate that "only" software bugs can have serious consequences.
- timthorn 10y ago
  There's now an investigation into the clinical aspect, as at least one patient died during the outage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38535946 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38535946