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Yes, the public holds misconceptions about how much the autopilot on a plane does. But some of their beliefs are accurate, and would be dangerous when extended
by SilasX 7y ago
Yes, the public holds misconceptions about how much the autopilot on a plane does. But some of their beliefs are accurate, and would be dangerous when extended to a car: like how, when the plane AP is engaged, you don’t need sub-second reaction times for possible obstacles. You do need that in a Tesla.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoFairly sure that you do need that for autoland, to engage TO/GA (for go-around) and take control. Most other cases, AP disengagement indeed means "now we think about what next".
- hugh-avherald 7y agoNo. Required reaction times would be around 2-3 s. Even if you took 10s, you're not going to die -- you might hit the edge lights though
- Piskvorrr 7y agoAt which point you're arguing semantics: "it's not the short landing that kills you, it's the impact into whatever you hit there!" You're describing Asiana Airlines 214, whose crash killed 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
- hugh-avherald 7y agoNo I'm saying the pilot flying an aircraft correctly configured for autoland in which the autoland system encounters a fault does not require subsecond reaction times to avoid a crash. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 is irrelevant because (1) it was not correctly configured for approach, (2) the autopilot was switched off over a minute before the crash, and (3) the autopilot did not fail. The parent of this thread was an argument over whether a aircraft flying on autopilot needs the pilot monitoring it to have subsecond reaction times to avoid a crash. It doesn't.