Germanwings plane crashes in French alps with 150 on board

Safer than the average human driver, yes. Safer than highly trained human drivers? That's unclear - and that's the comparison when you're talking about when comparing to an airplane pilot, the vast majority of whom will go their entire careers and never be in a crash. Here's some timely news on this as Tesla is introducing some self-driving features next summer:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/28/tesla-self-driving-cars_n_6961922.html


Tesla’s autopilot feature will only be available on interstate highways, as CEO Elon Musk has said the technology is not yet “safe on suburban streets.”

Fully automated vehicles are still a ways off from becoming the norm. If a circumstance arises where an accident is unavoidable -- say, for instance, a child runs out into the street -- the computers that control the car do not yet have the ethical reasoning to deduce whether they should sacrifice the driver by suddenly swerving away, or run down the child. Last September, Ron Medford, Google’s safety chief on its driverless car project, said the company had not yet begun to study that issue.

 

Great example.

If it's a child, I'll risk running into a pole or wall, just to swerve away from the child. If it's some animal, I'll still try to step on the brakes and avoid it...but I grew up in a rural area, and the local vet always told me...run it over, the boar is a moving object, but if you run into a tree while trying to avoid the boar, the boar might be alive, but you won't be.

And I don't see how self-driving cars will be able to make that judgment in a split second...just yet.

 

Having a flight attendant in the cockpit when 1 of the pilots step out is a good idea.
Is it fool proof? No, but it's cheap and it can be implemented today.
Then they can take time and figure something else out.

 

You ****s just need to embrace Skynet.

 

All German airlines plus I think Air France and some others implemented the two people in cockpit rule one day after this incident.

 

or IRobot or Chappie or Ultron

 

It seems like Lubitz had a few major psychological issues, at least one of which may have been caused by his frustration with his job -- the low pay, high pressure and high demands. This is a danger of getting into a profession that many other people are clawing their way to get into, and one in which many people even consider it a hobby (flying). These types of professions don't have to pay much and can treat their employees like crap because there is always a long line of others waiting to take their spot.

 

Unbelievable- I completely agree with you. Take it from me, after working with people from 100s of different fields, this happens in quite a few of them. I think they also have to look at their confidentiality laws- this is of course important, but in certain occupations, maybe they have to allow physicians to report medical conditions directly to employers.

They typically pay pilots crap compared to other occupations with similar levels of responsibility. Heck, look at teachers. Do you know how well they pay teachers in other countries? And you wonder why our educational system is a bit ****ed- it's why I got out of teaching, and I was one of the better ones (according to my principal). No way was I staying in that occupation based on the pay.