6 ms·

My dad works in the airplane industry and had an interesting story to tell me that relates to this. (I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is or what the source

by jxcole 15y ago

My dad works in the airplane industry and had an interesting story to tell me that relates to this. (I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is or what the source is, sorry). Apparently, it is illegal for pilots to read while flying. Even if they are heading in a straight line with no one around for miles. This is because one time an pilot wasn't paying attention and due to a series of software failures, the plane turned into a mountain. Interestingly, the plane was tuning at a very exact amount so that the number of Gs remained constant. In any case, this single crash caused regulation to state that computers can never fly planes by themselves. This strikes me as rather unfair. If a single human crashed a plane, it does not make it illegal for humans to fly planes by themselves. Another example is that in London, subways must be driven by a human. Even though driving a subway may be trivial (there is no way to steer), Londoners apparently do not feel comfortable being driven by a non-living thing. They want to be sure that if they die, the driver dies too, adding a level of accountability. It seems that this sort of wide-spread mistrust of machines is driven more by socially normal paranoia than any kind of logic. I for one am rooting for machines to take over all forms of driving. There may be a few mishaps, but it will probably become hundreds of times safer eventually.

billybob 15y ago
Counterpoint: as an airplane passenger, my experience is the same whether there's a human pilot or not; I sit in my seat until the ride is over. But in my car, if it could drive itself, I could get in the back seat and sleep. I could have a tiny apartment back there and read or play video games. I think that if people will text while they drive, risking their lives for a tiny message, they will gladly let their car drive for the payoff of getting to do whatever they want during the trip. Side effect: if people can sleep comfortably in the back seat while their car drives, suddenly a 4-hour commute may sound reasonable. That's going to screw with city planning, pollution, etc.
daniel-cussen 15y ago
Unions have a lot to do with this as well.
- nickpinkston 15y ago
  A friend at Union Switch and Signal told me that the Chinese subways (which can run full-auto) had to provide work for two people for each train. One guy presses a large "Go" button to leave the station, which is automatically stopped at, and there's also an emergency stop button. The other guy has an "open / close door" control.
  - jordanb 15y ago
    In Chicago, there was a case some years ago where a woman was pulled under a train by a door. She was carrying a very expensive violin. She got off the train and the doors closed between her and the violin, with the strap around her shoulder. Because the strap was thin, it didn't activate the door's obstruction detector. Because the violin was so expensive, she didn't want to lose it, so instead of crawling out of the strap, she stood there and waited for the conductor to notice her. One of his jobs was to verify visually that there were no problems in the station before the train started moving -- but he didn't do that. She was dragged under the train and the wheels sliced off her legs. Point being, those people are likely serving an important safety function. The conductor didn't do his job on the Chicago train and so a woman lost her legs. But a system with no human conductor would be an unsafe system by design.
    - stanmancan 15y ago
      The Skytrain system in Vancouver is all automated. I don't recall if it's had any accidents, but I've never heard of any. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)
      - counti8 15y ago
        The system has an automated track safety system. It can get a little annoying at times as a rider — I've heard blowing leaves on the tracks can trigger the system, which is significant given the large majority of stations are elevated and can be exposed to the elements. This article from a few years back has described some of the more unfortunate cases: http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/SkyTrain/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/SkyTrain/
arethuza 15y ago
"Londoners apparently do not feel comfortable being driven by a non-living thing." The Dockland Light Railway in London is driver-less, although there is a staff member on each train to operate the doors and check tickets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway
- GFischer 15y ago
  So does a French metro line and others :) . But it's not the same - as one Frenchman put it: "it's like an elevator, only it goes horizontally instead of vertically". That is not the case with driverless cars - not that I'm against them. The use cases put forth in the article are quite compelling, but we still haven't been able to eradicate "elevator operators" ("ascensoristas") here in Uruguay, it will be far more difficult to remove drivers' unions !
nickpinkston 15y ago
This is easy... just make the engineers who built the subway sit inside. You're welcome.
montagg 15y ago
It's certainly not "logic," I wouldn't call it paranoia. Consider that some people just like to be more in control of their lives than they are, and they see that small bit of control slipping away every day. If you don't understand computers -- and, granted, if you're reading this forum, it's probably hard for you to put yourself in those shoes -- you're putting your life in the hands of a black box. Nevermind that you do it (unknowingly) all the time. Everything you touch is starting to become alien because it incorporates some crazy technology you've never seen before. There's a great section in Neal Stephenson's Anathem where the science-y younger brother is speaking to his older sister, who's mechanically talented but not very techy. He says there's always a better way to build something, that you can always take the inefficiency out of whatever system you're working with. But she doesn't want that, because she wouldn't be able to fix it herself. That's how most people see technology, and to be honest, we see it similarly, because we can fix it, so it's not a threat. In 30 years, will we be able to fix the things that are running to world, and will we be as inclined to trust them as we do now? I'm not saying it's logical, or appropriate, but it's a natural response to the situation. I think it's important to work with it rather than dismiss it.
izend 15y ago
There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States -- one death every 13 minutes. I will wage anyone that if all the cars on the road were computer driven there would be no where near 42,636 people killed per year.
- jsdalton 15y ago
  I too can imagine the number dropping down far lower than that, even under a thousand, let's say. I can then imagine the newspaper headlines the few times per year that computers do end up, for whatever reason, being responsible for a small handful of deaths: "COMPUTER GLITCH KILLS FOUR PASSENGERS IN HORRIFIC CAR ACCIDENT!" Never mind that human "glitches" are responsible for dozens of such accidents every day at present. For whatever reason, I have a strong feeling that headlines such as those will scare people worse than the way things are now.
  - noblethrasher 15y ago
    And I worry about the case when it will become more blameworthy for a human rather than a computer to operate a vehicle.
    - sorbus 15y ago
      Why? If computer-driven cars are much less likely to crash than human-driven cars, it would be entirely appropriate for there to be a social stigma against humans driving cars (because it would show disregard for the lives and safety of others). It would also be entirely appropriate to treat human drivers more harshly when they were responsible for accidents, as they would have had the choice of instead allowing a computer to drive and statistically probably avoid the accident.
      - noblethrasher 15y ago
        You misinterpreted my sentence (but perhaps it wasn't your fault since I elided a crucial piece of information). I did not say that human-driving ought not be morally blameworthy but, since I enjoy driving, I am understandably worried about a time when something that brings me pleasure will become unethical.
fizx 15y ago
This argument (while good) won't apply to cars for simple economic reasons. Having a human pilot or subway driver costs 1 marginal person for hundreds of people. Having an extra driver per car costs 1 person per person. I will strongly bet that the two orders of magnitude difference in cost will overcome the bureaucracy. Additionally, once cars become sufficiently advanced, it will be much cheaper to insure a self-driving car than to insure a human. Once the change happens, it will be breathtaking how rapidly it occurs. Social stigmas are hard to sustain towards a large portion of the population. In 2000, if you were wearing a helmet skiing, you were crazy. Now, you're crazy not to. You used to be a loser if you were on a social network. Now you're a loser if you're not. Both these changes happened over perhaps one to three years. Critical mass may only be ~5% of the population. You only need enough to avoid individuals being singled out as odd.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "Social stigmas are hard to sustain towards a large portion of the population." Over 90% of Americans have used illegal drugs, and yet there is still a strong stigma there. http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009.pdf http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009... (C.f. page 101, as well as the methodology.)
  - thecabinet 15y ago
    Your phrasing of that statistic is misleading. What you mean is, "90% of Americans have used illegal drugs or used legal-drugs illegally." When you say "illegal drugs" people think of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc. Casually lumping in underage use of alcohol and tobacco is purposefully misleading.
    - Alex3917 15y ago
      Does it count underage drinking? I didn't even notice that if it does. Regardless, around 85% of Americans use marijuana alone, so it wouldn't change the statistics by more than one or two percent. So I don't see how that would be misleading.
logjam 15y ago
I appreciate the rest of your comment, and I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "illegal" but if you mean "breaking an actual law" it is not "illegal" for a pilot in command of an aircraft "to read". Having said that, if you're doing something in the cockpit as pilot in command that doesn't pertain to piloting your aircraft, you're doing it wrong. Autopilots are adjunct flight controls. They are not...the pilot in command.
csomar 15y ago
The pilot should be there when the Software fails, and that's why he shouldn't be busy with something else. It adds to security, and it's worth it (from my point of view) whatever is the cost.
- benmccann 15y ago
  You can't say "whatever the cost". What if it were $1 trillion per passenger? Obviously it's not, but there's some point at which you would change your mind. You have to assign a cost to these decisions in order to have a well reasoned discussion. The EPA, CPSC, NRC, OSHA, and OMB for example all use varying costs of life to make decisions with the value of one human life ranging from $1-$8 million.
  - wisty 15y ago
    "Cost" can also include the cost of poor decisions. If 1 pilot in a hundred million decides to override the autopilot, and crash the plane into a landmark building, this is a cost.
gst 15y ago
"Londoners apparently do not feel comfortable being driven by a non-living thing." Does not surprise me. Most Europeans have not even adapted to automatic transmission in cars, and still believe that a human can switch gears better with manual transmission (which has not been true for decades now). Makes me wonder if they ever adapt to fully automated driving. (And yes, I'm saying this as a European).
- archangel_one 15y ago
  A lot of automatic transmissions plain aren't that smart; I can think of several I've driven that were too conservative about changing down on a hill which made the cars much less responsive than they should have been. Also there's the old chestnut about autos being less fuel efficient / less powerful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission#Benefits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission#Benefits Either way, I don't think the prevalence of manuals in Europe is entirely (maybe not even mostly) about not giving up control to the machine.
- weavejester 15y ago
  Clearly that's not universally true, otherwise racing drivers would use automatic gearboxes. It may be true for everyday driving, but I'd need to see some citations for this claim. Frankly, I'm a little dubious of automatic transmission. Perhaps I've just been driving the wrong cars, but I haven't found an automatic gearbox that can match a human being. For instance, if I'm descending a steep hill, I'll stick the car in a lower gear, but an automatic always chooses the higher gear.
  - ars 15y ago
    Automatic transmissions avoid engine braking. If you want it, you need to choose it manually. And personally I never do for the simple reason that brakes are a lot cheaper than transmissions. And I rarely descend a hill long enough and steep enough that brake heating is a serious problem. (And when I do I usually just slow down, and stay slow.)
    - stretchwithme 15y ago
mrgordon 15y ago
I've ridden the driverless subway system in Copenhagen. Apparently the Danish don't mind being driven by a non-living thing.
Tycho 15y ago
The fact that pilots are willing to travel on a plane is the best guarantee that the plane is safe, better than any regulatory licence/permit anyway. That's one thing you'd lose, as well as not having someone to hold directly accountable. As for driverless cars... It just seems folk are getting a bit ahead of themselves - can computers really handle all the edge cases that come up while driving? Like when you have to break some road rules temporarily in order to circumnavigate an obstruction. Or when the car gets stuck. Etc.

by jxcole 15y ago

billybob 15y ago

Counterpoint: as an airplane passenger, my experience is the same whether there's a human pilot or not; I sit in my seat until the ride is over. But in my car, if it could drive itself, I could get in the back seat and sleep. I could have a tiny apartment back there and read or play video games. I think that if people will text while they drive, risking their lives for a tiny message, they will gladly let their car drive for the payoff of getting to do whatever they want during the trip. Side effect: if people can sleep comfortably in the back seat while their car drives, suddenly a 4-hour commute may sound reasonable. That's going to screw with city planning, pollution, etc.

daniel-cussen 15y ago

Unions have a lot to do with this as well.

nickpinkston 15y ago
A friend at Union Switch and Signal told me that the Chinese subways (which can run full-auto) had to provide work for two people for each train. One guy presses a large "Go" button to leave the station, which is automatically stopped at, and there's also an emergency stop button. The other guy has an "open / close door" control.
- jordanb 15y ago
  In Chicago, there was a case some years ago where a woman was pulled under a train by a door. She was carrying a very expensive violin. She got off the train and the doors closed between her and the violin, with the strap around her shoulder. Because the strap was thin, it didn't activate the door's obstruction detector. Because the violin was so expensive, she didn't want to lose it, so instead of crawling out of the strap, she stood there and waited for the conductor to notice her. One of his jobs was to verify visually that there were no problems in the station before the train started moving -- but he didn't do that. She was dragged under the train and the wheels sliced off her legs. Point being, those people are likely serving an important safety function. The conductor didn't do his job on the Chicago train and so a woman lost her legs. But a system with no human conductor would be an unsafe system by design.
  - stanmancan 15y ago
    The Skytrain system in Vancouver is all automated. I don't recall if it's had any accidents, but I've never heard of any. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)
    - counti8 15y ago
      The system has an automated track safety system. It can get a little annoying at times as a rider — I've heard blowing leaves on the tracks can trigger the system, which is significant given the large majority of stations are elevated and can be exposed to the elements. This article from a few years back has described some of the more unfortunate cases: http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/SkyTrain/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/SkyTrain/

arethuza 15y ago

"Londoners apparently do not feel comfortable being driven by a non-living thing." The Dockland Light Railway in London is driver-less, although there is a staff member on each train to operate the doors and check tickets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

GFischer 15y ago
So does a French metro line and others :) . But it's not the same - as one Frenchman put it: "it's like an elevator, only it goes horizontally instead of vertically". That is not the case with driverless cars - not that I'm against them. The use cases put forth in the article are quite compelling, but we still haven't been able to eradicate "elevator operators" ("ascensoristas") here in Uruguay, it will be far more difficult to remove drivers' unions !

nickpinkston 15y ago

This is easy... just make the engineers who built the subway sit inside. You're welcome.

montagg 15y ago

It's certainly not "logic," I wouldn't call it paranoia. Consider that some people just like to be more in control of their lives than they are, and they see that small bit of control slipping away every day. If you don't understand computers -- and, granted, if you're reading this forum, it's probably hard for you to put yourself in those shoes -- you're putting your life in the hands of a black box. Nevermind that you do it (unknowingly) all the time. Everything you touch is starting to become alien because it incorporates some crazy technology you've never seen before. There's a great section in Neal Stephenson's Anathem where the science-y younger brother is speaking to his older sister, who's mechanically talented but not very techy. He says there's always a better way to build something, that you can always take the inefficiency out of whatever system you're working with. But she doesn't want that, because she wouldn't be able to fix it herself. That's how most people see technology, and to be honest, we see it similarly, because we can fix it, so it's not a threat. In 30 years, will we be able to fix the things that are running to world, and will we be as inclined to trust them as we do now? I'm not saying it's logical, or appropriate, but it's a natural response to the situation. I think it's important to work with it rather than dismiss it.

izend 15y ago

There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States -- one death every 13 minutes. I will wage anyone that if all the cars on the road were computer driven there would be no where near 42,636 people killed per year.

jsdalton 15y ago
I too can imagine the number dropping down far lower than that, even under a thousand, let's say. I can then imagine the newspaper headlines the few times per year that computers do end up, for whatever reason, being responsible for a small handful of deaths: "COMPUTER GLITCH KILLS FOUR PASSENGERS IN HORRIFIC CAR ACCIDENT!" Never mind that human "glitches" are responsible for dozens of such accidents every day at present. For whatever reason, I have a strong feeling that headlines such as those will scare people worse than the way things are now.
- noblethrasher 15y ago
  And I worry about the case when it will become more blameworthy for a human rather than a computer to operate a vehicle.
  - sorbus 15y ago
    Why? If computer-driven cars are much less likely to crash than human-driven cars, it would be entirely appropriate for there to be a social stigma against humans driving cars (because it would show disregard for the lives and safety of others). It would also be entirely appropriate to treat human drivers more harshly when they were responsible for accidents, as they would have had the choice of instead allowing a computer to drive and statistically probably avoid the accident.
    - noblethrasher 15y ago
      You misinterpreted my sentence (but perhaps it wasn't your fault since I elided a crucial piece of information). I did not say that human-driving ought not be morally blameworthy but, since I enjoy driving, I am understandably worried about a time when something that brings me pleasure will become unethical.

fizx 15y ago

This argument (while good) won't apply to cars for simple economic reasons. Having a human pilot or subway driver costs 1 marginal person for hundreds of people. Having an extra driver per car costs 1 person per person. I will strongly bet that the two orders of magnitude difference in cost will overcome the bureaucracy. Additionally, once cars become sufficiently advanced, it will be much cheaper to insure a self-driving car than to insure a human. Once the change happens, it will be breathtaking how rapidly it occurs. Social stigmas are hard to sustain towards a large portion of the population. In 2000, if you were wearing a helmet skiing, you were crazy. Now, you're crazy not to. You used to be a loser if you were on a social network. Now you're a loser if you're not. Both these changes happened over perhaps one to three years. Critical mass may only be ~5% of the population. You only need enough to avoid individuals being singled out as odd.

Alex3917 15y ago
"Social stigmas are hard to sustain towards a large portion of the population." Over 90% of Americans have used illegal drugs, and yet there is still a strong stigma there. http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009.pdf http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009... (C.f. page 101, as well as the methodology.)
- thecabinet 15y ago
  Your phrasing of that statistic is misleading. What you mean is, "90% of Americans have used illegal drugs or used legal-drugs illegally." When you say "illegal drugs" people think of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc. Casually lumping in underage use of alcohol and tobacco is purposefully misleading.
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    Does it count underage drinking? I didn't even notice that if it does. Regardless, around 85% of Americans use marijuana alone, so it wouldn't change the statistics by more than one or two percent. So I don't see how that would be misleading.

logjam 15y ago

I appreciate the rest of your comment, and I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "illegal" but if you mean "breaking an actual law" it is not "illegal" for a pilot in command of an aircraft "to read". Having said that, if you're doing something in the cockpit as pilot in command that doesn't pertain to piloting your aircraft, you're doing it wrong. Autopilots are adjunct flight controls. They are not...the pilot in command.

csomar 15y ago

The pilot should be there when the Software fails, and that's why he shouldn't be busy with something else. It adds to security, and it's worth it (from my point of view) whatever is the cost.

benmccann 15y ago
You can't say "whatever the cost". What if it were $1 trillion per passenger? Obviously it's not, but there's some point at which you would change your mind. You have to assign a cost to these decisions in order to have a well reasoned discussion. The EPA, CPSC, NRC, OSHA, and OMB for example all use varying costs of life to make decisions with the value of one human life ranging from $1-$8 million.
- wisty 15y ago
  "Cost" can also include the cost of poor decisions. If 1 pilot in a hundred million decides to override the autopilot, and crash the plane into a landmark building, this is a cost.

gst 15y ago

"Londoners apparently do not feel comfortable being driven by a non-living thing." Does not surprise me. Most Europeans have not even adapted to automatic transmission in cars, and still believe that a human can switch gears better with manual transmission (which has not been true for decades now). Makes me wonder if they ever adapt to fully automated driving. (And yes, I'm saying this as a European).

archangel_one 15y ago
A lot of automatic transmissions plain aren't that smart; I can think of several I've driven that were too conservative about changing down on a hill which made the cars much less responsive than they should have been. Also there's the old chestnut about autos being less fuel efficient / less powerful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission#Benefits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission#Benefits Either way, I don't think the prevalence of manuals in Europe is entirely (maybe not even mostly) about not giving up control to the machine.
weavejester 15y ago
Clearly that's not universally true, otherwise racing drivers would use automatic gearboxes. It may be true for everyday driving, but I'd need to see some citations for this claim. Frankly, I'm a little dubious of automatic transmission. Perhaps I've just been driving the wrong cars, but I haven't found an automatic gearbox that can match a human being. For instance, if I'm descending a steep hill, I'll stick the car in a lower gear, but an automatic always chooses the higher gear.
- ars 15y ago
  Automatic transmissions avoid engine braking. If you want it, you need to choose it manually. And personally I never do for the simple reason that brakes are a lot cheaper than transmissions. And I rarely descend a hill long enough and steep enough that brake heating is a serious problem. (And when I do I usually just slow down, and stay slow.)
  - stretchwithme 15y ago

mrgordon 15y ago

I've ridden the driverless subway system in Copenhagen. Apparently the Danish don't mind being driven by a non-living thing.

Tycho 15y ago

The fact that pilots are willing to travel on a plane is the best guarantee that the plane is safe, better than any regulatory licence/permit anyway. That's one thing you'd lose, as well as not having someone to hold directly accountable. As for driverless cars... It just seems folk are getting a bit ahead of themselves - can computers really handle all the edge cases that come up while driving? Like when you have to break some road rules temporarily in order to circumnavigate an obstruction. Or when the car gets stuck. Etc.