The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues 247
An anonymous reader writes: Malcolm Gladwell has an article in The New Yorker about how automotive engineers handle issues of safety. There have been tons of car-related recalls lately, and even before that, we'd often hear about how some piece of engineering on a car was leading to a bunch of deaths. Sometimes it was a mistake, and sometimes it was an intentional design. But we hear about these issues through the lens of sensationalized media and public outrage — the engineers working on these problems understand better that it's how you drive that gets you into trouble far more than what you drive.
For example, the Ford Pinto became infamous for catching fire in crashes back in the 1970s. Gladwell says, "That's a rare event—it happens once in every hundred crashes. In 1975-76, 1.9 per cent of all cars on the road were Pintos, and Pintos were involved in 1.9 per cent of all fatal fires. Let's try again. About fifteen per cent of fatal fires resulted from rear collisions. If we look just at that subset of the subset, Schwartz shows, we finally see a pattern. Pintos were involved in 4.1 per cent of all rear-collision fire fatalities—which is to say that they may have been as safe as or safer than other cars in most respects but less safe in this one. ... You and I would feel safer in a car that met the 301 standard. But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
For example, the Ford Pinto became infamous for catching fire in crashes back in the 1970s. Gladwell says, "That's a rare event—it happens once in every hundred crashes. In 1975-76, 1.9 per cent of all cars on the road were Pintos, and Pintos were involved in 1.9 per cent of all fatal fires. Let's try again. About fifteen per cent of fatal fires resulted from rear collisions. If we look just at that subset of the subset, Schwartz shows, we finally see a pattern. Pintos were involved in 4.1 per cent of all rear-collision fire fatalities—which is to say that they may have been as safe as or safer than other cars in most respects but less safe in this one. ... You and I would feel safer in a car that met the 301 standard. But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
What? (Score:4, Funny)
Listen to the engineers and not marketing or the media? You must be crazy!
Pinto (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the brakes were too good, resulting in all the rear-endings?
Seriously, our scientifically-illiterate society is rife with unintended consequences and cures that are worse than the disease.
Re:Pinto (Score:5, Interesting)
Or the positioning of the gas tank that made it vulnerable in rear-end collisions made it less vulnerable in other kinds of collisions. That's exactly the kind of tradeoff real safety engineers have to make.
Re:Pinto (Score:5, Insightful)
And safety engineering is getting degraded by their need to not stick out with one failure that is far more pronounced than in other models/brands, even if they manage to reduce overall risk that way. Stupid.
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Very much this. Like worrying about flying, but not about the drive to the airport, when the latter is far more dangerous.
Re:Pinto (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pinto (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Good brakes don't make crashes. Poor braking behavior does.
Nope. Poor breaking behaviour doesn't cause crashes, people not keeping a safe distance causes crashes.
In most sane countries you are required to keep a distance long enough that the car in front can perform an emergency stop without you hitting it. If you do hit it, you've caused the accident (and in Oz, will get hit with a negligent/careless driving charge).
I cant control how badly the people around me drive, but I can control the way I drive and take steps to minimise and avoid accidents. Keeping a safe distance is one of the simplest things I can do.
Re:Pinto (Score:5, Informative)
We had this happen to us. Driving along the pacific highway south from Brisbane we had to brake hard because of debris on the road causing the cars in front to emergency stop. Because of my following distance I didn't have to ABS level brake. Unfortunately the 18 wheeler truck behind me didn't have enough space on me. He hit me still travelling at close to 70kph. The only reason my family and I are alive today is the fact he was unloaded and we were in a very safe car (E Class Mercedes).
The truck driver has been charged with Driving without due care and attention.
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Good, and shame on him. (I really need a more serious expression of disgust here.)
If you're driving a monstrosity of a truck, you have a damned high duty of care to make sure that monstrosity is not putting others in harm's way.
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It's been 2 years and still when I think about that accident I get upset. No one was seriously hurt (my wife has ongoing back issues) but I had my two girls in the car. The youngest was only 6 weeks old at the time. Because I knew he was going to hit us and how big he was, that when I turned around after the crash I expected both my girls to be dead.
All I can say is thank you to the designers of their car seats and capsule. The top of the boot lid had penetrated the rear windscreen and come a long way i
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Wow, holy crap. I have two little girls (4 months and 2 1/2 years) and I can hardly imagine.
Re:Pinto (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're driving a monstrosity of a truck, you have a damned high duty of care to make sure that monstrosity is not putting others in harm's way.
Spoken like someone who's never driven anything with more than 4 wheels. Driving a semi (hell, even a body job) in the city is a massive pain in the ass. Try and keep that safe braking distance all you like - it's going to be nothing more than a massive gap that gets filled every six seconds by a little four wheeler darting in front of you. People think "Ooh, a space! I can save 30 seconds on my commute with that!" instead of "Ooh, that's the space that will be filled by 45,000 lbs of truck if shit goes sideways... I don't think I want to be there." Most drivers in North America have no respect for the physics of a large vehicle. People will cut off semis and then jump on the brakes without a second thought. Then they get all pissed off, horrified, and self righteous when it ends in an accident and some bonehead winds up with their trunk folded into their fucking glove box - "Oh! Those big trucks just need to keep their distance and this wouldn't happen!" But it's all a joke. People treat semis like they're just big cars that can stop and turn on a dime, same as any small passenger vehicle. They're not passenger vehicles. Fact is you don't ever want to tangle with one (because you will lose, not "might" lose) and the best way to ensure that it never happens is to give them the space they need. It's really not much different than boxing with wildlife - if you walked up to a bear and spit in its face, people would think you were an idiot (and they'd be right), but you can cut off a semi to within spitting distance and somehow HE'S the asshole at fault when you wind up smeared across the freeway. People need to be responsible for their own safety too.
Re:Pinto (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pinto (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but I live in the San Francisco Bay area and, were I to try to keep this minimum safe braking distance, I would end up a traffic hazard as I continually brake hard to reestablish my minimum safe braking distance to the idiot who has just switched into the lane in front of me since they can get ahead one car length.
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That's what CA gets for demonizing police. Here, people cheer when a cop pulls over someone being an idiot in public.
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If braking hard is what you do every time someone mergers in front of you to maintain your safe distance then there is still a problem with your driving style.
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Also, sticking in the outside lane at 5 miles an hour under [the speed limit], you'll always have a gap in front of you.
In Georgia, that will get you a ticket for impeding traffic, not to mention a symphony of air horns and possibly a collection of bullet holes.
Get real. if you're doing 50 in Georgia you're still in a parking lot or pulling out of your driveway.
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Well, given that an airplane crash is almost certain death sentence anyway, so what?
Honest question: what are you supposed to do if the plane is going down?
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Yea, in my country hitting a car from behind makes you guilty (should have kept the distance), unless the other driver is drunk (drunk driver is always guilty) or he changed lanes too close in front of you and braked immediately.
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Have you considered that maybe a scientifically administered society is always just an aristocracy with better post hoc fallacies?
Go away, child, and get out of my life.
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You want a rant? Here's a rant:
It's, you know, look, I don't need you guys to be fans of the Pinto, I just need to know if there's something we want to keep here, it stays here. We don't need to know that Bucker Tarnhart's in the fucking airport when we haven't spoken to Syle Kipworth. I think we owe that fucking kid the right to be called and told that he's going to be sent down as opposed to reading that Bucker Tarnhart is on his way from Louisville. I just... I don't get it. I don't get why it's got to be this way. Has it always been this way where we just tell fucking everybody everything? So every fucking opponent we have has to know exactly what we have. Which fucking relievers are available, which guys are here and which guys aren't here, when they can play, and what they can do. It's nobody's fucking business. It's certainly not the opponent's business. We have to deal with this fucking bullshit.
I like to talk â" and I have spoken as candidly as I can with you people, if that's not good enough, I won't say a fucking thing. I'll go, 'yes sir, no sir.' And I can do that. But fuck, I've been as candid as I can fucking be about this team and our engineers, and we've got to deal with this shit, every fucking team that we fucking play has to know every fucking guy that's here and what they can and can't do? Fuck me. It's a fucking disgrace. I'm fucking sick of this shit. It's fucking hard enough to fucking win here to have fucking every fucking opponent know exactly what the fuck we bring to the table every day. It's fucking horseshit. I don't like it. It's what I'm saying. To make it very clear, I don't like the way that this shit's going â" at all. I don't like it. I don't think you guys need to know everything. And I certainly don't think you need to see something and tweet it out there and make it a fucking world event. How the fuck do we benefit from them knowing we don't have Mevin Desoraco? How do we benefit from that? They benefit from it. I just want to know how we benefit from these fucking people know we don't have a engineer here. Can you answer that? How is that good for the Pinto?
(Courtesy Bryan Price).
Easy fix (Score:2, Informative)
I believe Ford lost the Pinto case because internal tests discovered the problem and also found an inexpensive fix: a $5 plastic wall between the gas tank and the impact zone of the tank.
In other words, the jury decided the company consciously bypassed a cheap and easy fix to shave a few bucks from manufacturing cost. It was a pretty simple tradeoff. I have to agree with Jury in that case. The car's statistical risk compared to other brands is moot (unless the other brands also discovered and skipped the
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Agreed. We look at the Pinto specifically as a case study in my engineering ethics class back in college, there was not excuse for what they did. All engineers do have to make trade-off decisions, but the fucking deluxe fix was $11, that is it.They could have built that into the car price with virtually no impact. TFA picked one terrible example...
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You may have noticed that even the cheapest Ikea furniture comes with safety features though. For example, their £10 bookcases are supplied with a metal bracket, screws and rawl plugs for attaching them to the wall so that they can't fall over onto your young children.
Even if you design to a price, there is an ethical obligation to include reasonable safety features. If you can't do it for the target price, don't do it at all. Engineers have a responsibility to say "no" when the requirements are
Re:Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)
We look at the Pinto specifically as a case study in my engineering ethics class back in college, there was not excuse for what they did. All engineers do have to make trade-off decisions, but the fucking deluxe fix was $11, that is it.
I doubt very very much if the final decision was made by an engineer. It was far more likely made by either an accountant or a lawyer.
Re:Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)
> I doubt very very much if the final decision was made by an engineer. It was far more likely made by either an accountant or a lawyer.
This is the key. I remember taking a required ethical course in engineering because it was felt that engineers must learn the human factor of their decisions. All the cases we studied where unethical decisions was made was a result of business or political decisions, not engineering decisions.
Like a private gets blamed when a general messes up, engineers get blamed when a VP messes up. There is a reason why generals and VPs rarely write down orders or decisions.
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I expect the decision was made by a manager/executive, who was advised by an accountant (who may have gotten an award) and a lawyer (who probably got fired).
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Why? You've never heard of an engineer estimating costs? Or of being given a cost and told to design to that cost? Brace yourself, because both of these are bog standard parts of engineering.
Engineers are not angels. They're human, and they fuck up too.
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There were probably many other areas where an extra $11 would have increased safety; they probably had no way of telling that this particular area would turn out to matter so much in practice.
So the only way to address this issue is if they had generally upped their safety standards and that probably would have meant adding dozens more parts. Furthermore, those $11 are $70 now. So, a few dozen extra parts at $7
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I also had this in business ethics class. Apparently this particular case was singled out in analysis within Ford. They were actually dumb enough to calculate, whether putting in that wall was going to be more or less expensive than paying the families for the loss of life, which they pinned at around $300k. It's the $300k that made everyone go batshit. The lesson learned in business class: when you have to make your trade off on human life, make sure that the value you put on it doesn't offend anyone.
Re:Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)
$300k in 1970's dollars was a reasonable number for safety calculations back then (about $2 million in today's dollars). The current number used by government regulators is about $5 million.
Engineers and the legal system constantly put a value on human life; modern societies couldn't function without it. Often, the value is a lot less than $2 million ($300k in 1970). Safety engineers use larger numbers because juries suffer from the same kind of self-righteous indignation you display. But make no mistake: paying too much for safety in some areas means that overall, there will be less safety.
The natural consequence of the Pinto decision is not for engineers to use a larger amount of money in their cost/benefit calculations, it is to avoid studying potential safety issues altogether that might get the company into trouble.
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While true, there is also the problem that many of the families and people that bought that car had no idea there was a risk like this. At what point is there a cutoff? Many people will take risks like that to save money, but not all (maybe not even a majority). Is it really fair for them to make that decision for these people? I mean they even knew that almost every time it happened people would get killed. There is a huge difference in "this could cause a problem with operation of the vehicle" and "t
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That $11 figure is all over the Internet, but a better, in-depth, source is this one [google.com] "Business Ethics: Case Studies and Selected Readings" By Marianne Jennings. In it we read that: “Among the design changes that could have been made were side and cross members at $2.40 and $1.80 per car, respectively; a shock-absorbent “flak suit” to protect the tank at $4; a tank within a tank and placement of the tank over the axle at $5.08 to $5.79; a nylon bladder within the tank at $5.25 to $8; a plac
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At the time that the Pinto was bing built, car manufacturers went to great lengths to shave fractions of a penny off the cost of a car. $11 was a huge cost addition at that time.
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The Japanese were building cars for a lot less than Ford back then but Ford and GM didn't care or notice.
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Agreed. We look at the Pinto specifically as a case study in my engineering ethics class back in college, there was not excuse for what they did. All engineers do have to make trade-off decisions, but the fucking deluxe fix was $11, that is it.They could have built that into the car price with virtually no impact. TFA picked one terrible example...
I'm curious how the case was presented. We did not have an this case when I studied engineering, our professors made a point of ensuring we understood that all our decisions had ramifications and as engineers we had a duty to ensure we made decisions in the best interests of the public. that didn't mean we had to over engineer everything but that we made sure what we did was the right solution and not just the easiest solution.
My experience, much later in business school when we did have to take an ethics
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But, as the article points out, there was no reduction in fires from rear collisions in the Pinto after it was fixed. The plastic wall never worked.
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Well, it says there was no reduction of fatalities from requiring gas-tanks to survive impacts up to 30mph (the pinto failed at 25mph, while others failed at 27-28mph). Assuming that the "fix" was installed (which is sensible, as there was a recall), it did indeed made no discernible difference.
The thing that the public needs to learn is to trust engineers. Sure, engineers are subject to political pressure, so have the public bring in their own engineers. But they _must_ be engineers. Anybody else will get
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Engineers designed the original SRB field joint for the Space Shuttle. When it had problems during testing, engineers designed the slapdash fix. Then that had problems, engineers decided it was OK to continue to fly while they worked on a fix.
Politicians caused that joint to even exist. By putting the SRB plant in Utah, the SRBs had to be short enough to transport by rail, which meant that there had to be a joint which was connected at KSC. NASA wanted the plant to be near water so that the SRBs could be just shipped to KSC, and wouldn't have required the joint at all. As others have stated, the engineers had said no to launch, the accountants said yes.
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Re:Easy fix (Score:5, Informative)
Except of course, if you read the article (I know,must be new here) Ford actually _won_ the Pinto case and while they had previously (before the court case) agreed to install that plastic wall, the expert opinion was that it wouldn't actually accomplish anything and wouldn't have made any difference in the specific situation of the court case.
It's like saying horses should all be recalled because someone might fall off of them. Pintos were no more dangerous than other similar cars from all the other car companies. It's just how small, light cars were built in the days of high gas prices and associated regulations. Technology has advanced since then, but there are still trade-offs.
What most people "know" about Pintos is largely media-driven, not factual.
Re:Easy fix (Score:5, Funny)
You win!
You made a horse analogy on Slashdot about a car named after a horse. That is a many layer onion.
Fantastic.
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I think what's going on is they won the criminal case but lost a civil case.
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I think it is perfectly reasonable to hold companies responsible for when their cars explode or do other bad things. But that should be independent of whether the company acted "consciously" or not and only be based on whether a design is objectively sufficiently safe or not. If a design is unsafe, the company should have tested for it; ignorance is no excuse. By making awarenes
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This is the airplane speech about automotive safety devices from Fight Club, right?
Ford pulled a similar stunt with Explorer pillars (Score:3)
Ford Explorer roof pillars were initially spec'd with a fairly high-grade steel. Citing costs, management refused to use the high-grade steel and instead used a weaker steel.
Result? Lots of roof-cave-ins on a vehicle that was prone to roll over.
http://www.autosafety.org/memo... [autosafety.org]
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Whether they lost the case depends on which one you use.
There was actually a criminal case, which they won, and a civil case they lost.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out the cheap and easy fix you describe did not actually work in the real world. $11 of plastic vs. a 1-ton car does not seem like it would do much, but it does seem like a plaintiff's attorney with a couple photogenic clients could convince a Jury that Ford shoulda done something, even if that something was just theater.
Techno-libertarians, to the concentration camps (Score:2)
See? All you techno-libertarians just want to sell us shoddy crap now. Why should we let you participate in society again?
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GM has managed to garner additional positive attention by going back and fixing so many things, as well as by admitting that they should have found (or in some cases did find) the problem and identified a solution. It may have led some other car companies to do something similar, as even without GM, recalls are at record or near-record levels for several companies. Suddenly, recalls seem like the responsible thing to do and appear to help the brand image.
How you drive: (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's how you drive that gets you into trouble"
I've found that those who drive with blood alcohol levels above 1.0 lead to lots of trouble. Far more than any recent engineering defect I've heard of.
The biggest safety related maintenance problem is usually the loose nut behind the wheel.
Re:How you drive: (Score:5, Informative)
If someone has a BAC of 1.0, they're probably dead, so I'd be very surprised to see them driving...
On the other hand, I would agree with your argument for .10 BAC
Re:How you drive: (Score:5, Funny)
If someone has a BAC of 1.0, they're probably dead, so I'd be very surprised to see them driving...
You must not have cable. It's a new spinoff, 'The Drunk Driving Dead'.
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So car safety should take into account in the other half of "Its how you drive the car more than what you drive that get's you into trouble", assuming a two car collision and one making a mistake whilst the other is just an innocent victim of that mistake. "So is is what you drive and how others drive, that gets people into trouble".
So the whole system should be revised because statistics prove it is extremely dangerous and causing a huge amount of pain and suffering. Just barely reasonable for the past
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" .10 BAC"
Yep. Those dang typos. (I assurre you I wasn't drunk posting ossifer... hic.)
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Well, one man in my country had 0.84% BAC. Yea, twice the LD50 level. He was driving but could not find his way out of an (almost) empty parking lot and a bystander called the police.
The record BAC was 1.4%, though that guy was unconscious on the side of a road.
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Indeed. Just as the primary problem in IT security, for example, or in medicine.
Actuaries... (Score:3)
had and probably still have more control over production than engineering. Ford figured it would add an $11 per car cost of manufacture to make safe and dead bodies were cheaper. I doubt it's changed..
http://www.cnbc.com/id/1025899... [cnbc.com]
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It's like upgrading a computer, for $10 more, you can get a better performing part. It''s nice you cheery pick one part on a car that had no more fires than any other car made at the time and look back and decide a change. At what point do you stop? For $15 they could have added disk brakes in the rear, for $11 they could have put bigger brakes in the front. For $5 they could have put in a thicker seat belt strap. For $10 they could have put pillars in the doors. For $200 they could have put air bags in it
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for those who dont know the jeep grand cherokee from 92-01 was built to the specs at the time, and were good to go
however NOW, the government wants jeep to "fix" a problem with it based on current regulations. The fix is a simple one (add a tail hitch) but the point remains the car was built to standard at the time (the government admits this even) but they want to retrofit all of them
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If you had read TFA, you would know that the "fix" did not help one bit, likely because these cases of fire mainly happened at speeds where nothing practical can prevent the tank from rupturing. TFA does not say whether Ford knew that though, but they may well have.
How you drive (Score:3, Informative)
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rear-end collisions typically have a lot more to do with how others drive than how you drive.
Huh? What does that even mean?
If you said that collisions have to do more with "how other people drive than how **I** drive," maybe your statement would be logically comprehensible.
Or, to put it another way, for some values of "you", "others" = "you." (I.e. some people you (the parent) are including as "you" are part of the bad "others" who apparently are poor drivers.)
Re:How you drive (Score:4, Interesting)
When you drive, you have to always assume that everyone around you is an idiot with a death wish in a broken-down car and try to correct for this with your driving.
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Thing is I can't control what other people around me do. Even with anticipation, there is a too much of a difference between what a safe, prudent driver do or an idiot with a death wish would do. The responses to each vary considerably, and miscalculating can lead to a white knuckle moment, not to mention the same applies to a minivan following a motorcycle normally, but the minivan driver doesn't care, which is really the issue.
And even with good safety measures from engineers, I think there is such a thin
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typical safe following distance
There's no such thing as a typical safe following distance. It's not defined in the law at all. Safe following distance is defined, and surprise surprise it actually changes depending on what you're driving and the conditions.
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In my country if you hit a car in front of you, you are guilty for the accident because you failed to keep at a safe distance. It does not matter if the driver in front stepped on the brakes for no reason (in some cases you may be both declared guilty). The reasoning is that even if he stepped on the brakes for no reason at that time, what if there was a reason (pothole, someone on the road etc) that you could not see? You would still have hit the car in front of you.
The Pinto (Score:2)
Re:The Pinto (Score:4, Insightful)
It is actually a pretty good example, because it was not "an engineering disaster". That is just what the incompetent public mistakenly concluded.
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If you're arguing that it was only as crappy as it's American competitors, and not significantly crappier (as it's reputation implies) I'll agree with you.
But objectively speaking it was by definition crappy. It was an American car in the 70s. They were all complete crap between the arrival of VW in '69 and the introduction of the Taurus in '86.
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That is what I am arguing. An "engineering disaster" requires a bit more than it just being a crappy car.
Rationalization (Score:3)
"But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
and that boys and girls is how American car manufacturers rationalize producing the crap that they produce.
This is not surprising. GM or Ford would have to be one fscked corporation to walk out of a meeting with the mandate "let's make crap cars". Instead they manage to convince that their junk "had to be done this way", even though most other foreign car manufactures have much lower design failure rates.
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"But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
and that boys and girls is how American car manufacturers rationalize producing the crap that they produce.
This is not surprising. GM or Ford would have to be one fscked corporation to walk out of a meeting with the mandate "let's make crap cars". Instead they manage to convince that their junk "had to be done this way", even though most other foreign car manufactures have much lower design failure rates.
American manufacturers decided to make cheap cars and rely on bells and whistles to make their cars look advanced rather than actual engineering. They also tend to rely heavily on advertising and faux patriotism to sell the Korean designed, Mexican manufactured cars in the US because Ford/Chevrolet is 'Merican.
Every time a car is built down to a price they have an issue with reliability.
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They also tend to rely heavily on advertising and faux patriotism to sell the Korean designed, Mexican manufactured cars in the US because Ford/Chevrolet is 'Merican.
What's the name of the worst Jeep model produced in the last two decades, a 2007 newly designed car that it was so bad Chrysler considered not releasing at all? Jeep Patriot of course. I kid you not.
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Malcom Gladwell is a corporate shill (Score:4, Interesting)
http://shameproject.com/report... [shameproject.com]
http://mikethemadbiologist.com... [mikethemadbiologist.com]
Malcom Gladwell is the product of conservative institutes and think tanks; he has worked for racists, the tobacco industry, oil companies, big pharma, and more. His books popularize the kind of thinking that said industries have used to defend their practices.
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Not only that, but in the article he completely dismisses/ignores/pretends-it-doesn't-exist the Toyota unintended acceleration analysis [safetyresearch.net] that happened after the NASA folks got their chance. Turns out the NASA folks didn't get everything there was to analyze, and low and behold once all of the info was available: Toyota's engineers did a crap job of safety in their software.
Full details can be read here. [cmu.edu]
I can't speak to him being a shill, but he's definitely either misinformed or disingenuous.
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Next up - revising the "Liberty Ship" fuckup and extended coverup that led to more sinkings than the German U-Boat fleet until the press took a photo of one broken in half in the fitting out dock. Let's revise it to it all being OK because the corner cutters made a pile of money out of it thanks to the taxpayer and that's the way corporate American sh
And that... (Score:2)
... bourgeois neoliberals love to use to defend their sycophancy.
Modern approach to car safety is wrong (Score:2)
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Except the number of accidents caused by these systems is lower than the accidents prevented. Every decision you make on a day to day basis is a trade off between two outcome. When you are designing a system, particularly like auto braking you are running the trade off between whether the machine knows better or the human knows better. In many/most cases the machine's response will be an improvement on the human's response.
From your example I'm guessing you have never driven a car with automatic brake sy
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Except the number of accidents caused by these systems is lower than the accidents prevented.
That's not really clear. What is clear is that safety systems tend to reduce the severity of accidents, so that less of them are fatalities.
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Indeed, the old school 1920s system of having a nigger named Belvidere driving one around is much safer for the car owner. Of course, poor Belvidere would get impaled on the steering wheel shaft in a crash.....
Or we could just have a drivers test that was more rigorous and improve our mass transit systems like bus and rail to cut traffic and give bad drivers a way to get from point a to point b without driving themselves.
160 characters to die for (Score:3)
Damned if you do... (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember a bit of design in a small aircraft. In order to address the problem of gear-up landings, Piper came up with a system that, when it detected the appropriate combination of airspeed and engine conditions, would automatically lower the gear. It had an override so the pilot could indicate that this was not accidental and to not deploy the gear.
The system was very popular and copied onto a variety of aircraft. Nobody knows how many gear-up accidents were prevented since nobody calls up after a fine landing to report that they had actually screwed up and were saved by the auto-extend system. But the one person who failed to override the system after an engine failure and had the gear deploy filed and won a lawsuit claiming that the auto-deploy system was what caused them to be unable to glide to the airport. As a result, the manufacturers ceased making them and directed their removal from existing aircraft.
How long will it be before someone sues claiming that the auto-braking system in their car caused whiplash?
Suggestion: IQ Brain Scan (Score:3)
Driver: "Open the door, car."
Car: "I can't do that <insert name here>. You're too stupid to let behind the wheel."
Problem solved.
Cheers,
Dave
Ignore (Score:2)
commenting to remove dismoderation
STFU, Gladwell. (Score:2)
You work for authority. You work on commission. Therefore you can not be trusted.
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If you love someone don't worry about their gender.
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It's worse than that people suddenly brake checking at speed camera's causes a lot of minor accidents.
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In my country, speed cameras are preceded with a sign announcing the presence of said camera. The signs far enough away that you can slow down without hitting the brakes too hard (unless you were really speeding). The government said that, yes, more fines would be collected without those signs, however, the intended result is not to collect fines, but to make people drive slow, at least in that area. Which the signs do well.
You say "idiot tax", I say "trap" (Score:2)
Because the real idiot is the one who thinks that professional police exist to enforce the law fairly, whereas, in fact, they exist to reproduce a subordinate, beaten-down working class.
You know, the "idiots" that make your enchanted techno-life possible won't have to worry about you when you're riding a lamp post. You might want to think about that real hard before you open your arrogant fly-hole again, child. Americans have overstayed their welcome in the world and should all STFU.
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Fiber glass doesn't have to mean that things come apart. Formula 1 cars have always been the lowest weight cars yet they are probably the safest cars to have a crash in. Look at the Tesla - goes fast but it is designed to safeguard the occupants in the most spectacular crashes.
The problem is that most car companies are designing cars with frames that minimize cost and maximize profits. A single frame is designed to support 2 or 3 brands and several years worth of value cars to luxury sedans and crossovers,
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There is no reason that a company couldn't custom design a safe frame first and build a car around that, but the big (3?) names aren't nimble enough or interested to become that until more Tesla-like companies come along to shake up the market.
It costs a lot to build a safe car. Tesla and Audi A8 drivers walk away from accidents that tear their cars in half. But you'll note that these are some of the most expensive cars to produce. Cadillac is now using the same techniques (plus some, so they can build an aluminum unibody with steel floor pans) so your wish has been granted, the first genuinely safe cars are coming out from a big 3 automaker. Problem is, they're coming from the marque that doesn't share platforms.
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Give and take. Sports cars also tend to be the safest cars on the road in that you have more options to avoid getting into an accident in the first place rather than just slamming down on the brakes and hoping for the best. Especially for top tier sports cars, their capabilities far exceed legal limits and cost too much in insurance and repair costs for much risky behavior.