alfadriver said:Yes and no. To make the max competitive with the airbus, Boeing made the choices to modify the current 737 platform instead of a more major redesign, as it would save *them* money. The airlines would pay only current 737 and/or A320 prices for said new plane.
It wasn't just a more efficient plane. It was a more efficient plane with the same type rating as the ones they already owned. A 797 or 7A7 or whatever would not have been that.
jmabarone said:Tom1200 said:This naturally got me thinking; could we see a situation, where like Boeing's 737 issue, where the car overrides the driver causing an accident?
I was near an accident that may have been caused by a situation described above. I was turning onto a side road with a newer F150 behind me and another truck behind him. F150 was following very closely and seemed to go into automatic emergency braking while I was getting off the main road. Truck came to a complete stop and the truck behind him could not stop in time.
I've also had the stability control get our old Five Hundred pretty sideways (while going straight) because we found some black ice. Car was fine, stability control light started flashing, and the car started doing crazy things.
Yes, that was a stability control system that was developed 20 years ago, but I agree that I question when this tech will stop preventing accidents and will begin to be a contributing factor.
In software development, those are called corner cases - situations that the developers never thought of. In their defense, the possible odd-ball situations a car could end up in are just about endless, making it impossible to catch all of them.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Regardless which way it veers, the Tesla may be seen as at-fault. Once Tesla claims that self-driving can be fully enabled, it seems like it'll open the flood gates to lawsuits, frivolous or real, rightly or wrongly. Sure, their system may work as well or better than a human driver, but with an important difference. When someone is hit by another driver driving Brand X, Brand X doesn't get sued, the driver does. With Tesla, they're about to confront the opposite case, where instead of the Tesla driver, Tesla themselves will be blamed. It'll be even worse since Tesla is a much more tempting target to sue, with their deeper pockets.
Oh, those laws are already on the books. The fault lies with the vehicle's driver, not the car or its software. As the driver it is your duty/expectation to take control if you are in a situation the software can't handle.
Understood, and the rule made perfect sense - before full self-driving became a thing. Almost certainly the law will have to be modified. To get this back on-topic, it's a bit like always blaming pilots when their near fully-automated airliner crashes. Sensors do ice up, fail, or become intermittent. Buttons, controls, and displays can fail. It's common for the FAA to issue required changes for manufacturers to better handle such failures. I'm just saying that once the machine reacts faster than the human, blaming the human by default no longer makes sense.
Wait until Melonhead unleashes his Robo Taxis onto the roads. Without steering wheels, pedals, or mirrors.
"That means steering wheels, pedals, mirrors, and other required equipment will be either loosely defined or entirely optional."
While that hasn’t happened yet, at the time Musk said: “Once regulators are comfortable with us not having a steering wheel, we will just delete that. The probability of the steering wheel being taken away is 100%.”
CNBC.com: U.S. clears way for truly driverless vehicles without steering wheels
In reply to VolvoHeretic :
Which backs up my thinking that the laws about always blaming the driver will have to change.
There are several good articles about the lack of training the crews of the two fatal crashes had. Sounds like it almost could be compared with what US drivers get in drivers ed. Poor airmanship caused a relatively minor problem to become catastrophic in both cases. As has previously been said, Boeing did half ass the Max, which also contributed to the crashes.
In reply to BenB :
Boeing basically came up with a system that was never needed. The pilots with some very basic training could do what MCAS does.
I bring this up because at some point fixing operator error causes more issues than it solves.
I don't have any experience with the Max, just the -700 NG, but from what I'm reading, the Feds required a fix because Boeing had to move the larger engines forward and up to squeeze them under the wings. This causes excessive pitch changes any time power is adjusted, so Boeing came up with MCAS. Dealing with a failure is a no brainer for properly trained crews; just hit the pitch trim disconnect switch. My friends who are still flying said Boeing pissed off a lot of pilots by not saying anything about the system.
This discussion really drives home just how much IBM's 1979 decree about computers making management decisions only becomes more prescient with time.
BenB said:I don't have any experience with the Max, just the -700 NG, but from what I'm reading, the Feds required a fix because Boeing had to move the larger engines forward and up to squeeze them under the wings. This causes excessive pitch changes any time power is adjusted, so Boeing came up with MCAS. Dealing with a failure is a no brainer for properly trained crews; just hit the pitch trim disconnect switch. My friends who are still flying said Boeing pissed off a lot of pilots by not saying anything about the system.
From what I read, before the big crashes there were a couple of incidents of similar failures on major carriers where the more experienced, more intuitive, less "do it by the book and nothing else" pilots did just that. They turned off the auto trim and flew the plane manually and it was fine.
I can see a day when an over the air upgrade "bricks" a whole bunch of cars,
Same could happen to EV chargers ........ and I guess most things anymore that needs cloud connections.
BenB said:
Boeing had to move the larger engines forward and up to squeeze them under the wings. This causes excessive pitch changes any time power is adjusted, so Boeing came up with MCAS.
From what I've read, the pitch authority concerns from moving the larger engines forward and up weren't related to any thrust moment issues, but rather the aerodynamic forces at high angles of attack... And even then it was only in the corner of the flight envelope of a clean airplane approaching stall under manual control, due to the inconsistent control feel it caused (compared to the NG) and apparently not because of an actual lack of stability. Note: The NG also moved it's larger engines forward and up relative to those of the Classic as well.
kb58 said:In reply to VolvoHeretic :
Which backs up my thinking that the laws about always blaming the driver will have to change.
The laws were lobbied for by certain automakers in anticipation of self driving cars, to stay ahead of the liability curve.
I thought that the Max 8's crashes occurred because all other passenger planes use 3 angle of attack sensors and the plane compares the three sensors and uses the two that are in agreement to indicate if the plane is approaching stall or not. The Max 8 only had 2 AOA sensors to decide if the plane is going to stall, but one sensor on both planes was non-functional, possibly because of bird strikes and the MCAS chose the bad sensor to listen to. The rest of the story we all know about.
Although the MAX 8 was equipped with two AoA sensors – one on either side of the aircraft’s nose – MCAS was designed such that a high AoA reading from only one of these sensors would activate the system and force the aircraft’s nose down
To: VolvoHeretic:
Thanks for the attached Icheme article.
I haven't finished it yet, and it appears to be an excellent report/summary.
Thanks again,
Rog
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:alfadriver said:Yes and no. To make the max competitive with the airbus, Boeing made the choices to modify the current 737 platform instead of a more major redesign, as it would save *them* money. The airlines would pay only current 737 and/or A320 prices for said new plane.
It wasn't just a more efficient plane. It was a more efficient plane with the same type rating as the ones they already owned. A 797 or 7A7 or whatever would not have been that.
Again, Boeings choice to make a competitive plane. This airframe had some odd compromises that should have been left behind decades ago, but Boeing keeps it alive. It's not all on the consumer.
Tom1200 said:In reply to BenB :
Boeing basically came up with a system that was never needed. The pilots with some very basic training could do what MCAS does.
I bring this up because at some point fixing operator error causes more issues than it solves.
Too be clear Boeing was following the demands of the airliners who did not want a single hour of retraining to be required for the retrofits. To mush cost.
I've said it before, but it warrants repeating. Who knew that Gene Roddenberry could so accurately predict the future 56 years ago. When Elon's Johnny Cab goes berserk:
alfadriver said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:alfadriver said:Yes and no. To make the max competitive with the airbus, Boeing made the choices to modify the current 737 platform instead of a more major redesign, as it would save *them* money. The airlines would pay only current 737 and/or A320 prices for said new plane.
It wasn't just a more efficient plane. It was a more efficient plane with the same type rating as the ones they already owned. A 797 or 7A7 or whatever would not have been that.
Again, Boeings choice to make a competitive plane. This airframe had some odd compromises that should have been left behind decades ago, but Boeing keeps it alive. It's not all on the consumer.
I've ridden on both the 737 and A320. The A320 must be 4" or 6" wider because I couldn't walk straight down the isle on the 737.
In reply to BenB :
And any decent pilot can deal with the pitch changes as they adjust the power.
I realize one can't always pushback against the Feds but yeah not telling pilots was just plain stupid........yet it happened.
That is what made me start this thread; I can totally envision someone in the automotive industry making the same mistake.
wearymicrobe said:Too be clear Boeing was following the demands of the airliners who did not want a single hour of retraining to be required for the retrofits. To mush cost.
Something I read said the customer leadership was as surprised as anybody to learn they had 'demanded' this. Apparently verbiage was basically copy and pasted from the Classic-to-NG contracts, and nobody bothered to actually discuss the details in question. Epic communication fail. Much like a number of regulators and affiliated pilots have publicly indicated that, prior to the accidents, with better communication MAX may actually have been able to pass type cert without MCAS at all.
VolvoHeretic said:I've ridden on both the 737 and A320. The A320 must be 4" or 6" wider because I couldn't walk straight down the isle on the 737.
The A320's fuselage dimensions aren't constrained by the width of a horses ass.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
I am aware of that but it speaks to the level of arrogance I see in software rollouts and or updates all the time.
Things are done by people who think they are smarter and or no better than the people using the equipment and or software that don't turn out so well.
When they start to unravel those people refuse to believe the issue is actually an issue.......until it blows up multiple times.
My concern is that we see this with our cars as the nannies become more and more intrusive.
DUIs and inattentive driving are the two most common cases of fatal accidents.
wearymicrobe said:Too be clear Boeing was following the demands of the airliners who did not want a single hour of retraining to be required for the retrofits. To mush cost.
Not to turn this into a "well, I heard..." kind of thread, but I thought Boeing made this variant to avoid going through a whole FAA certification again. In a nutshell, they wanted to change just enough to meet the airlines' requests but not enough to warrant a completely new design and requisite certification.
Let's not forget that lion airs Florida based 3rd party repair shop set the zero of the aoa that caused mcas issues off by 20 degrees or so. They used an improper angle gage
ethopipoian crash was an aoa bird strike as the causing incident.
I was very very very close to all of this.
In reply to jmabarone :
Layers of the onion. Type cert is one layer, while simulator time is another within it.
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