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The Air France crash happened because the pitot tubes were obstructed by ice crystals, the autopilot system was automatically disengaged. The pilots had to fly and did not have the experience they needed. What should the pilots have done? Try so hard to turn on the autopilot instead of flying the best way they could? What would happen if humans need to take control of a car because the AV system disengaged? well because humans are out of practice, there will be huuuge problems.
Clearly you have never read the transcript. The pitots were only briefly obstructed. The very experienced captain never took back the controls and left the two co-pilots in control and flat out said "Well, I don't know!" (in French) when they asked what to do.
2:10.55 The cockpit's avionics are now all functioning normally. The flight crew has all the information that they need to fly safely, and all the systems are fully functional. The problems that occur from this point forward are entirely due to human error.
2:14.29 impact
Clearly you have never read the transcript. The pitots were only briefly obstructed. The very experienced captain never took back the controls and left the two co-pilots in control and flat out said "Well, I don't know!" (in French) when they asked what to do.
2:10.55 The cockpit's avionics are now all functioning normally. The flight crew has all the information that they need to fly safely, and all the systems are fully functional. The problems that occur from this point forward are entirely due to human error.
2:14.29 impact
This is precisely why computers are more reliable than humans.
No that's what happens when humans are too dependent on computers to do the work for them. They did not have the experience to fly because they depended on computers, when the time came for them to do their jobs (and the computers did not work), they did the exact wrong thing.
Remember, the autopilot was disengaged. More the reason why humans should not depend on computers, it makes us dumber.
An experienced, well trained pilot would not have crashed that plane in that way. What you have stated does not prove that humans are not well suited to dangerous tasks like flying airplanes. Pilots safely fly airplanes ever day, and have done so for many years. With the failed sensors, it is not clear that just turning the autopilot back on would have worked. You have not proved your assertion. This failure to prove it applies to your arguments about self driving cars.
They had an experienced well-trained captain plus two co-pilots. The sensors only failed temporarily and were fully functional 4 minutes before crash.
No that's what happens when humans are too dependent on computers to do the work for them. They did not have the experience to fly because they depended on computers, when the time came for them to do their jobs (and the computers did not work), they did the exact wrong thing.
Remember, the autopilot was disengaged. More the reason why humans should not depend on computers, it makes us dumber.
Ok, you know better than the entire aviation industry, I guess.
No, but I know a fool when I see one and I look for facts. The pilots did not have the training they needed because they trusted the computers too much. When the computers failed, they did not have the practical training in manually handling the aircraft at high altitudes (because it's assumed that the computers always worked) and they were startled by the sudden disengagement. This is not me this is from the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Anlyses pour la securite de l'aviation civile (or the french version of the NTSB). It was also suggested that the Airbus cabin is not as well designed as Boeing's cabin (particularly the fact that Boeing has a control yoke compared to Airbus's sidestick).
What would have happened if planes run on computers and no pilots on board?
What would happen if these pilots trained more on flying a plane without a computer on?
No, but I know a fool when I see one and I look for facts. The pilots did not have the training they needed because they trusted the computers too much. When the computers failed, they did not have the practical training in manually handling the aircraft at high altitudes (because it's assumed that the computers always worked) and they were startled by the sudden disengagement. This is not me this is from the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Anlyses pour la securite de l'aviation civile (or the french version of the NTSB)
Please provide the link where it says the pilots did not have the training they needed. You realize they fly in simulators?
I appreciate all the thought you've put into your post. That said, it's mostly full of some crazy fear of things that, while are possible, probably aren't the thing to focus on. There's also a couple of factual errors. Also, while I'm sure the day is coming, it will be a very long time before you won't be allowed to drive a car as they will have to coexist for quite some time. My comments inline below:
Quote:
Originally Posted by UpstateNYS
Looking at AV cars, I can see three different problems and four downsides to AV
The first three has to do with control
1) What stops a car company like Lyft, Uber, etc (acting together or in concert) to say "no, I'm not taking you in my car" for any reason? None. And what would happen? You are basically limited in your mobility and under a form of house arrest. You cannot go anywhere, your freedom of movement is denied.
Because this is not how the country works. What's to stop your power company from refusing you service and cutting off your heat, lights, internet, etc.... What's to stop the cell phone companies from deciding you aren't worthy of communicating? Mostly regulations/laws and the overwhelming backlash. There are so many things key to our lives today with technology or not that a small number of companies could prevent you from doing what you want to do. It just doesn't work that way.
2) Say if you are a Donald Trump supporter or a member of the Democratic Socialist Party. What stops the car companies or the government from saying "No, I am not taking you" to a Trump Rally or an Anti-Confederate Flag Protest or both? Answer: NONE. Again, your mobility is limited and you are basically banned from going somewhere because of someone else opinion and you will have nothing to say against it.
3) What stops a car company (or a police) from locking you within your AV "pod" and taking you for a nice trip to the police station or a secret. What happens if you disappear? This is the ultimate form of control over your life. That's why Baidu of China is investing so much in AV technology, just think of the possibilities of abuse!
These are the four downside of AV
Security
We all at one point or another had to suffer computer problems on our laptop or smartphone, how many times have hackers stolen data or install ransomware. Do people forget that North Korea basically hacked into Sony, Experian was hacked, and Russians are playing hacking games around the world?
Okay, it happens. Fine.
But what happens if terrorists or foreign nations hacks into our systems and one, two, or 1,000 self driving cars crash into each other? What happens if a computer which your life depends upon fails? You will die or be seriously injured. All the gains made in lives saved due to AV cars will be wiped out the largest series of road deaths in history. That is scary.
I find it hard to believe that Russia, North Korea, or terrorist groups are not going to pour the time and the effort to research these technologies and hack into them and cause a terrorist attack (If we ever get to the point where this happens, people will want the driver's wheel back so badly).
Sure, maybe they can get hacked. But a terrorist would do much more damage hacking (or blowing up) a nuclear power plant or the power grid, or the traffic light control systems we use today, or a hospital's computer systems, or emergency 911 services or....
Over on the house forum at city data there are always a bunch of people who don't want any smart home items "I would never have a smart door lock on my door -- what if someone hacked it and could get in my house?" Almost anyone can get in someone's house with a few dollars worth of tools and 20 minutes of training. There are so many malicious things a person can do that would be so much more impactful. Plus, even if hackable, it's likely they will have some fail-safes built in. You may be stuck on the side of the road, but this fear of 1000's of cars crashing themselves into each other seems far fetched.
Companies may patch some problems, but others will appear. Computers are the creation of humanity, they are never 100% perfect, my job is to find these things, and I know that the is always going to be a bug, no matter how perfect the technology.
No piece of technology is ever perfect. That’s why there are still pilots on airplanes.
Privacy
Every movement tracked, where did you start, where did you go, what time, what were you looking at outside the window. All of these things AV cars can and do collect. And when all of you technofacists push us to AV cars, the rest of us will have to deal with the day to day rape of our privacy. I hate having my information collected, that's why I set my computer to be completely private as possible (yeah, I am a software engineer so I can do that) and I don't use a smartphone.
You don't use a smartphone, but you use a cell phone, correct? In cities, tower triangulation and directional antennae can get very close to your location. Out in the middle of nowhere, the accuracy is less since there are less towers, but your general area is still known. The FCC has been pushing all phones to be able to give a location within 50 meters for 911 purposes, and this will be coming. Not to mention, you have toll transponders in your car, wherever you use a credit card, and many vehicles today have some sort of statlite tracking service (GM has Onstar, Mercedes has MBrace, Lexus has Enform, and others for BMW, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, Infiniti, Honda, etc., etc., etc.) If someone wants to track you, you'll need to be pretty far off grid to avoid it in this day in age. No cell phone, no modern car, no wifi with your computer, etc...)
Jobs and communities
With this AV technology, we will be throwing 1.5 million people out of a job. Just look at a map of the top jobs of each state. The vast majority of states have "truck driver" listed. Not to mention bus drivers, taxi drivers, mechanics. You are basically throwing millions or more people out of good middle class jobs and throwing community after community in poverty. The economic impact of these losses will be huge, but the proponents of this technology do not care. Universal Basic Income is not happening in this country so long as Democratic and Republican administrations serve the rich and the powerful rather then the people.
Entire communities across the United States will die because travelers will not longer see that interesting spot on the side of the highway. People will just read their Kindles, watch a film, completely oblivious to the unique and interesting communities on the side of the road. There will be a general increase in social isolation, as individuals will be in cars without windows and people will enjoy less social interaction (which will come with increased suicides, etc)
This is a good point. As a whole, the country will be fine as we've seen jobs shift from farming, to manufacturing to services and engineering, over the last hundred plus years. But there certainly will be communities that will struggle, just like those that had manufacturing or steel mills that went away.
Human agency
We humans are losing our independence to do things on our own. We are placing our lives and our freedom to move to third parties (in this case robots and car sharing companies) and we are losing our ability to think for ourselves slowly but surely.
What would happen in a blackout? What would happen if North Korea ignited a Electromagnetic Pulse over the United States, instead of a nuclear bomb. Existing cars (for the most part) can survive in these conditions. But AV cars will not. AV cars will eventually lose battery power and in a EMP burst all AV cars will just basically be permanently kaput. Those of us who are smart to keep our human driven cars will still be able to drive, whereas AV cars are basically two tons of useless metals.
All cars today have batteries, electronics, and computers and control modules that guide the engine. If you destroy an ECU from any car built from the 90's on, they will not work. So, again, you need to be driving really old cars if you want to avoid this. A new car today (that a human drives) averages 100 million lines of code. Yes, that's millions. Today's cars can be hacked (they have been), and be susceptible to many of the same things. If you want to go back to cars from the 60s, that's one point, but otherwise this is all a reach to think there is a massive change coming.
What happened when an autopilot system on a plane failed? The human pilot was not able to get the experience he needed to save the flight. In fact he did the exact opposite. Instead of pitching the nose down, he pitched the nose up and the plane stalled. Plane crashed. People died. All because the pilot did not get the training he needed thanks to the autopilot system.
What would happen if a child runs out in front of a car. If you are human, you would swerve to miss the child and run into a lamppost or a storefront and you may injury or kill yourself. But Mercedes Benz said that their cars will protect the human occupant at all times. So it is not unheard of to believe that a Mercedes Benz or other luxury AV car will just run down the kid and at the same time, call for EMTs through it’s automatic system. If you believe that this is right, that you are sick in the head.
Actually your statement about Mercedes system is not true at all. In fact, the new Mercedes driving assist systems specifically will provide additional assist if you initiate an evasive maneuver to avoid a pedestrian by adding the right amount of steering to avoid it (must be initiated by the driver though). If you take no maneuver to avoid a pedestrian, it will still brake in a straight line to not hit a pedestrian or to lessen the speed at impact.
Public health
We all heard the statistics. 30,000 people die every year and 90% is due to human error.
Putting this into perspective. The amount of people dying on roads is HALF what it used to be in 1990.
These facts are totally incorrect.
2016 had the most human deaths in 9 years and 2017 the second consecutive year over 40,000 according to the National Safety Council. USDOT has the number in 2016 lower at 37,461. You know what 1990 was? 44,559. That's hardly half. 1992 Actually had 39,250 , so there is very little change from the 90s, after a dip a few years ago. Any why is that unbelievable large number ok? As unbelievably tragic, sad, and terrible that 9/11 was, we lose the same many people on the road every 4 weeks. How is that ok?
AT THE SAME TIME. The number of cars on American roads has increased!
This point is valid, while total deaths are not that dissimilar from the 90's, deaths per mile driven and licensed driver is definitively lower.
Let me put this in simple terms: The number of people dying on roads is less, at the same time we have more cars on the road.
Now the question is: How do we reduce deaths on roads. We can do this without having to take away the wheel from drivers.
The first thing is the mandate of seat-belt interlock devices. If every individual in the car does not have a seat belt on, the car does not move. According to the US DOT: if these devices are mandated on all cars, traffic deaths will fall by 50%
This is another false statement. The odds of surviving a crash increase about 50% if you wear a seatbelt -- that doesn't equate to the amount of lives saved. The number of lives saved if everyone would wear a seatbelt is now less than 10%(2,814 of the 35,092 deaths in 2015 could have been avoided if seat belt use was 100% according to NHTSA).
The next thing is implementing changes to roadways to improve safety.
Before 2014, Queens Boulevard in New York City was called the Boulevard of Death and for good reason. Hundreds of people die every single year.
Another totally false statement. 100's did not die on Queens Blvd every year. 186 people from 1990 to 2013. That's an average of under 8 per year.
Mayor De Blasio introduced several changes to the roadway. This included more clear road markings, speed limits lowered, and new protection facilities for pedestrians.
And this is why this example doesn't apply to the rest of the world. 75% of those 186 deaths were pedestrian deaths. It was a road where pedestrians had a crosswalk allowing them 32 seconds to cross 12 lanes of traffic. That is fixable, as they now have 60 seconds to cross 5 to get to a protected island (or all 10 if they can make it). It's great that something was fixed on this stretch of road. It is not representative of anywhere else but other very densely populated cities with pedestrians getting killed trying to cross many, many lanes of traffic.
Since 2014, there has not been a SINGLE DEATH on Queens Boulevard. The Boulevard of Death turned into Zero Deaths in a short period of time. Not one death on a road heavily used by HUMAN driven cars.
The third thing will be to increase driver’s education and mandate tougher requirements for drivers. Driver’s education is among the toughest in the world, but we in America have very lax standards. By simply introducing tougher driver’s education on the road, we can have drivers that are better able to face the road and make better decisions.
I 100% agree with this!
Now, I think all of this hype about fully automatic cars with no controls is simply bunk. This is what is called the Overton Window, make the most radical proposal possible and then scaled back to a presupposed idea (like a politician wanting to spend $5 million on a project, proposing $10 million dollars, and then scaling back to $5 million as a show of moderation to get what he wants without shocking the voter).
I believe that cars with no controls is something that we humans will not accept because we humans like to be in control. What I see will be geofenced network of cars in urban areas and perhaps all new cars manufactured at no higher then Level 4 (allowing drivers to switch between modes as they see fit). Perhaps transponders will be installed in human driver cars to allow computer systems in other cars to adjust for human driven cars.
No steering wheel doesn't mean no control. We don't know yet how this will work, but I can imagine a car receiving voice directions to override certain events (like something blocking the highway). This will still not let you drive it, but I would assume you won't be "stuck">
I also see that there is going to be a single big incident (like the Hindenburg Fire or Three Mile Island) involving AV that humans will turn away from this technology and this idea will be thrown in the waste basket
Nuclear power generation in the US has tripled since three mile island, although now (39 years later) on the down swing, as other sources are currently plenty.
Two thirds of Americans do not want to give up control of their car. An MIT AgeLab study shows that trust for autonomous vehicles are eroding, ESPECIALLY among young people. With all these hacking incidents abounding, people do not and should not trust computers.
Congress and the auto industry should not try to bombard these people with propaganda about AV cars, Congress should say “yes sir” and “yes madam” to the American people and have their wishes implemented. We are the people, and we are the boss of Congress. Some may say that humans cannot stop the march of technology, but the power of We the People can stop any piece of technology.
Does that mean that I will ever give up driving, not as long as I can drive. And as a guy who deals with computers every single day, I will never ever trust autonomous vehicles.
AV cars will make us less fit and less healthy and will turn this nation into a more glutinous nation then it already is.
We are a nation founded by rebels and non-conformists, but I am afraid that we are become a nation that is bland and paranoid about safety. So much so that Americans are so willing to put on a pedestal the gods “Safety” and “Security” that we don’t care about giving up security, privacy, liberty, and CHOICE to those gods. Instead of focusing on curing heart disease, cancer, or chronic lower respiratory disease, we are diverting money to dangerous and destructive technologies.
Why don’t we require people to wear safety vests outside and knee protectors in order to make sure that I don’t fall and scrap my knee, so I can run to doctor about my boo boo.
They had an experienced well-trained captain plus two co-pilots. The sensors only failed temporarily and were fully functional 4 minutes before crash.
The experienced captain was in the crew rest area. He got back in time for the crash, but not in time to save the plane. How long did the plane take to travel the 30+ thousand feet that it fell through. The drop consumed some of that 4 minutes. That would mean they didn't actually have the full 4 minutes. Switching it back on may have been too late. Furthermore, did they know it was fully functional? I'm not so sure the autopilot is capable of recovering from a stall. The two co-pilots were not prepared for what they needed to do. Even IVMensch admits the co-pilots were not able to do even the most basic flying that every pilot should know. They knew how to fly with the autopilot though. When it malfunctioned, they were lost about what to do. I can easily see this happening with self driving cars, and inexperienced drivers.
The experienced captain was in the crew rest area. He got back in time for the crash, but not in time to save the plane. How long did the plane take to travel the 30+ thousand feet that it fell through. The drop consumed some of that 4 minutes. That would mean they didn't actually have the full 4 minutes. Switching it back on may have been too late. Furthermore, did they know it was fully functional? I'm not so sure the autopilot is capable of recovering from a stall. The two co-pilots were not prepared for what they needed to do. Even IVMensch admits the co-pilots were not able to do even the most basic flying that every pilot should know. They knew how to fly with the autopilot though. When it malfunctioned, they were lost about what to do. I can easily see this happening with self driving cars, and inexperienced drivers.
Pure nonsense. Did you even read the transcript and timeline? The captain didn't know the gauges were functioning because he couldn't see them because he didn't take a pilot seat. One of the co-pilots knew what he was doing. What he didn't know was that why the plane wasn't responding to his controls the way it should because what he didn't know was the other clueless co-pilot was pulling back on the stick all the way the whole time without telling anyone.
Computers wouldn't have argued amongst themselves until they crashed the plane.
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