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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

The NTSB does a fantastic job and should be held up as a model of how to include post-failure analyses and actions into your process. When the report is released, it should be good reading for many in the tech and engineering world.

>The Joint Authorities Technical Review, which produced the report, was led by Chris Hart, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, and included representatives from the F.A.A., NASA and aviation regulators from Europe, China, Brazil and other countries.

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Most (all?) European countries have similar accident investigators who likewise produce reports focused on Prevention Of Future Harm. In the UK these are MAIB (Maritime Accidents, ie boats) RAIB (Rail) and AAIB (Air)

For example:

https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/grounding-of-general-cargo-v...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/report-132019-fatal-accid...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/aaib-report-guimbal-cabri...

As with NTSB investigations a critical legislative intervention is that accident investigations are NOT evidence for a civil court. That means witnesses have one less reason to be trying to cover anyone's backsides and lie to an investigator.

Unfortunately you see in that MAIB example however, it isn't always enough. It's nothing short of astonishing how often a sole watch keeper on a big ship is somehow unware of where the ship is - almost exactly as though they were asleep, and the BNWAS (a device to alarm the rest of the crew when the bridge isn't paying attention, e.g. because they're fallen asleep) is for some reason not working or its logging is disabled. But I don't remember once reading in these reports that an officer confessed "Yeah, I was asleep".

How do civil courts judge accidents, then, if not using the NTSB report? Do they have to come up with a separate investigation which discovers the same facts, but with a plausible parallel construction?

If a civil court lawyer wants to introduce evidence into a civil court case yes they'd need to go get evidence themselves.

They can expect to run into plenty of ass-covering, exactly as they would if there were no accident investigation authority. Plenty of people who won't talk to them, or at the least won't talk unless subpoenaed, and will bring a lawyer to shut down as much as possible.

Sometimes I read NTSB reports for fun. It's a pleasure to read such well-thought-out analyses that perfectly straddle technical minutia dissection with layman accessibility. In my opinion, it's the pinnacle of technical writing. It's also incredibly important work: these kinds of reports have made air travel magnitudes safer than it was just 50 years ago.

Are there any particular reports you found most interesting? Can you provide a link?

Any of these, these are major investigations carried out by the NTSB:

https://huntlibrary.erau.edu/collections/aerospace-and-aviat...

The Galloping Ghost is one of my favorites: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

It's a terrible accident (that happened during an air show/race), but the work that went into figuring out exactly what went wrong and where is awe-inspiring. Also a very interesting (but tragic) story from a human standpoint. Here's the video of the accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyWUTXuXjr0

(No gore, but still: viewer discretion advised. Eleven people lost their lives and sixty-nine were injured.)

This one from 2004 involves a modern regional jet (Bombardier RJ) dead-stick crashing on a reposition flight. The crew's decision-making & remedial actions boggle the mind. I'd call it a case study in horrendous pilotage. Thankfully, no innocents died.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

A full decision in a good court case is pretty interesting to read too. A judge working through exactly why, in this particular scenario, they have decided to reach the decision they did.

For example Baskin v Bogan + Wolf v Walker (State appeals on Gay Marriage before a Circuit Court that decided to bundle together both cases since they essentially go "Yeah, but, gay marriage doesn't make babies, so it makes sense we don't allow it")

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp...

Now there are two much more famous "Gay Marriage" cases in the US, before the US Supreme Court. The problem is, those decisions are garbage. Windsor is "good" only in that it had the effect Gay Marriage proponents wanted, but the arguments offered by all the justices on both sides feel like weak excuses. Scalia seems to be desperately reaching for reasons why it's OK to do something manifestly unfair that he happens to support, Kennedy and the majority have to do mental gymnastics to explain why a case where one side has no real standing is even allowed to proceed to a decision in the first place (the real reason being: So they can decide in favour of Windsor)

Much older, but very interesting for this reason and with great benefit that it doesn't involve any politics you might worry taint your understanding, would be Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company in England. Read as three of the best legal minds essentially /invent/ modern contract law to find a path for how to get Mrs Carlill her money from the scumbags who lied to her about their bogus cure for the flu.

Agreed. I listen to SCOTUS oral arguments all the time on Oyez!

The Chemical Safety Board is great at this as well. Great reports and long animations explaining what led to industrial accidents.

Explosion and Fire at Williams Olefins Plant, Geismar, Louisiana, video (11 minutes long): https://youtu.be/Z1KaykPaF8M

It's a real shame their funding was cut. They really did some amazing work over the years.

I agree NTSB does fantastic job. I wish all government orgs worked as well as NTSB.

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