We are nothing after our death. Let us donate our body organs for the poor.

Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work The moment you fear, you are nobody - Swamy Vivekananda

If you think safety is expensive, try an accident... - O.P.Kharbanda

Preventable accidents, if they are not prevented due to our negligence, it is nothing short of a murder - Dr. Sarvepalli Radha Krishna, 2nd President of India

Zero accidents through zero unsafe behaviors. Do not be complacent that there are no accidents. There may be near miss accidents (NMAs). With luck/chance, somebody escaped knowingly or unknown to the person. But, we can't be safe, if we depend upon the luck.

Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.

We make No compromise with respect to Morality, Ethics, or Safety. If a design or work practice is perceived to be unsafe, we do not proceed until the issue is resolved. - Mission statement by S&B Engineers & Consultants Ltd. http://www.sbec.com/safety/

Human meat gets least priority - A doctor's comment on accidents

CSB video excerpts from Dr.Trevor Kletz, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQn5fL62KL8

Showing posts with label simulator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label simulator. Show all posts

Sep 1, 2011

Side effects of automation???

An article in Times of India on 31.08.2011 (Wednesday) on airplane accidents analyzed about how accidents are taking place due to too much dependence on auto piloting and how pilots are loosing their reflexes when they need in most critical situations.
It is our experience that even for simpler calculations, we use calculator or mobile phone instead of doing it mentally. If we want to know about something, we will not search books. Instead, we do google search or yahoo it. Even for meanings we fail to open dictionary. With such lifestyle, how wish to learn. Traditional methods of learning becoming extinct and getting addicted to NET. Less and less memory is being used and we do not play any mind games. The net result is loss of memory. After one or two generations, when creativity and intelligence is lost, I think we come back to square one and start reinventing the wheel.
I am not against automation. Automation should be designed, tested and implemented such that it is fool proof. We should use the technology for our advantage and should not blame it if there are accidents. Accidents occur because we fail to foresee, fail to plan, fail to use it the way it is required. It is easy to blame. But as an individual, as on authority, as on organization, what we are doing.
At home, we admonish our children, spouse, servant for some mistake. But, how many times we ourselves made mistakes. If we do mistakes, we call it experience and if others do it, we are ready to fire.
In the news item, it is mentioned that pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of flight i.e during take off and landing; that they have few opportunities to maintain their skills by flying manually as regulators do not allow manual flying.
In the same news item, at the end, it mentions about a fatal airline crash in the US, in 2009 caused after the co-pilot of a regional airliner programmed incorrect information into the plane's computers, causing it to slow to an unsafe speed, thereby triggering a stall warning. The panicked pilot bypassed two safety systems to control the plane unsuccessfully. In this case, even if the copilot fed wrong information, it appears, there are no program logic or supervision to verify about the wrong entry.
To address the complaint of pilots loosing reflexes of manual control due to automation, I feel that, after every fixed number of hours of flying, all pilots should be subjected to simulator training and examination for different types of scenarios and only those who passed with 100% should be put on roster.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Addicted-to-automation-pilots-forgetting-how-to-fly/articleshow/9804378.cms

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