I guess that was centered on DIA, so it didn’t make the point very well... But a lot of those flight paths see planes traveling (relatively) close behind each other, outside of the airport. Sometimes even over the Atlantic they’re very close. And at small airports, once outside of the taxiways and runways, on the ramp…

“Emotions and preconceptions” is some non-quantifiable, non-technical, fickle bullshit and should not be a testing parameter. It can’t be accurately and repeatably measured with real numbers, and therefore can’t be managed. Real data that should be collected are things like miles traveled per accident, response time…

https://www.flightradar24.com/39.66,-105.22/… Right, none of these planes are more than 10 minutes apart. Sure. Take a look around that for a second. Luckily, the people flying the planes are way smarter and more competent than the average driver, hence problems are properly dealt with so that you don’t hear about…

Focus testing is what gives you a Honda Civic, instead of a C2 corvette. Focus testing looks to try to please everyone, to make something useful for the average of everyone’s needs. Focus testing makes things boring and inhibits progress. A naming scheme is not something that should even be thought of as something to…

Sure, if they wanted to call it that, they could. And I’d love to watch anyone who couldn’t bother to understand how it works be never able to drive again due to a horrible rollover accident they could have prevented, just as should happen to people who already don’t understand it. Seriously, incompetent/moronic…

The problem I have with that is the fact that the name is expected to communicate so much. Tesla should be able to name it literally anything they want to, and that does not change what its features are. It is ultimately up to the owner to understand their car, which Tesla has not been ignorant about, as they clearly…

People shouldn’t need to be a pilot to understand what autopilot in a plane does. People should just have a desire to be informed about things, which they unfortunately aren’t. It’s not a terrible choice of naming, it’s an accurate one. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get being a part of something or using something…

The human factor is again the problem. The majority of plane crashes occur because of pilot error, and it is often more than just one error; rather a string of bad decisions. In an airplane, autopilot will cause CFIT as you mentioned in the article, because a basic autopilot system will maintain an indicated altitude,…

The best way to nail the milk/coffee ratio if you pour the milk first is to pour exactly no milk and drink the coffee black because if I wanted a damn milkshake I would’ve gone to an ice cream shop.

So they’re there for people who aren’t going to be able to handle extremely high stress situations with some form of control? Sounds like a form of natural selection to me. The windshield on a Cessna can be easily kicked out in an emergency, and if that’s the needed move to get out, it probably is a high-stress…

How often do you need to look at the seatbelt release to actually release the belt? I agree with you on the amber turn signals, but do red releases reaaaally add any sort of safety? I mean, everyone knows how and where to release a seatbelt already.

Sure, autopilot failed to detect something that an attentive driver would have seen. That doesn’t mean the system isn’t ready. It’s there to augment human driving, not replace it. The “autopilot” system doesn’t mean the human driver can stop paying attention, it just allows them to need to put less driver input into…

“Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer”
I’m not going to go blame autopilot here, those sensors only look in certain directions. But the driver couldn’t see a 73 foot (seriously, 73 feet!!!!) long semi pulling out in front of him. It couldn’t have exactly gotten off the line…

*I am no expert on emissions testing, this may be incorrect, but is my understanding of the process and part of the scandal*
In emissions testing, information such as equivalence ratio is reported from the car to the testing equipment. From that info, the testing equipment can then compare the NOx, CO, UHC, particulate…

Right, so I’m already admittedly an Audi fanboy, but between this and the Superbowl R8 commercial, their advertising department is really doing some great work.

So here we’re allowing some of the blame to fall to (perfectly functioning) hardware in the cars instead of fully blaming the incompetence of the drivers. I don’t think that adjusting cars to accommodate idiocy is a long term solution, because dumb people will still be dumb. We should instead just be able to make sure…

No. It just means that some people facilitate the provision of products or services that are so highly economically valued that they are well compensated and can therefore choose to do with that money what they wish. Their importance may also require travel quite often, in which case being able to literally bring the…

Raging racist? Now maybe this is racist and sexist, but I have to agree with cazzyodo. The worst drivers I see tend to be blond, white women in Lexus SUVS and Honda Pilots. I have been almost hit in crosswalks by them because they’re on phones countless times, have had them nearly change lanes into me, have had them…

Yes! I nominate you to fill the void left by Wilman as executive producer and make this happen! Was Idris a consideration when they were first looking to pick a cast? If he wasn’t at the very least a serious contender, someone isn’t doing their job very well over at BBC.

You should definitely read his book, The Man in the White Suit. It is excellent, and you will enjoy it even more than this post.