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Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

The general populace seems convinced that black box recorders are made of adamantium and can return data even if the plane falls into a black hole.

Meanwhile every time I read about a crash, I'm horrified by how primitive the requirements (and implementation) appear to be.

This reminds me of my favourite method for reviewing software I had never heard of: I check the release notes. If version v17 has "now uses transactions" then that means that the developers were happy to release the first sixteen major versions with data corruption as a feature. (Conversely, if the notes only mention fantastically obscure scenarios being fixed, then the basic issues have been fixed long ago.)

Battery backup being introduced in 2010 as a requirement is absolutely insane. It's not like batteries or battery backup are new technologies! This stuff has been around forever. Why on earth was this not a requirement decades ago!?

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Because adding a battery backup means one (or two!) more batteries that have to be tested and certified to fly; more batteries that have to be checked before flight; more points of failure that could ground an aircraft or cause incidents themselves; more weight on board (especially relevant for smaller craft); etc. etc.

The battery issue isn’t idle speculation; a recent flight I was scheduled for was cancelled when the airline accidentally allowed a battery to deep discharge, necessitating a new battery to be flown in from another city (delaying the flight so badly it was cancelled instead and passengers delayed to the next day).

Fascinating. How did you find out?

They announced the details at the gate. They even told us they were trying to get a new battery in from Cleveland (we were in Pittsburgh). I didn’t find out which battery was discharged though.

I hope that’s a trend. My experience has always been that they give zero information about such circumstances.

> Battery backup being introduced in 2010 as a requirement is absolutely insane

I welcome the formation of your company selling already-certified batteries that will not damage anything around them (like the precious recorded data) if they go from 500 to 0 in no seconds flat, are subjected to pressures of a few kilometers of water, or to a post-crash fire.

The batteries do not have to be located close to the recorded data

Then wires break or get burned. Causing cuts like now.

I find it just as crazy that many or most personal cars come equipped with cameras and sensors all over, but are not required to record any of it for analysis of a collision and attribution of fault.

The most unqualified person can be driving a 10,000 pound (4,500kg) electric Hummer and have no measures in place to use the built in cameras and sensors to determine what went wrong in the event of a collision.

Hell, there are cameras inside the vehicle that can tell us whether or not a driver was using their phone when a crash happens, but it does not seem politically popular to enforce reviewing this footage, even though being in a personal car is far more dangerous than being a passenger on a plane.

This is not strictly true and most cars have black box modules which record control inputs and IMU data.

I have never heard of this used to determine who is at fault in a collision. Does that happen? Also, video would be a tremendous help for ascribing proper blame, so why wouldn’t that be required?

When airbags came out, video recording was expensive, but that has long not been the case.

It does happen! These devices are generally only installed post-2005ish cars and the data is used more for safety investigations (did this car have a hardware fault) than insurance, simply because it takes a decent amount of skill to construct a narrative off those devices.

Video isn't required because even these black boxes, AFAIK, are STILL not required in the US. They also introduce unacceptable privacy compromises for Americans, seeing as how most people subconsciously treat their car as an extension of their living room.

>Video isn't required because even these black boxes, AFAIK, are STILL not required in the US. They also introduce unacceptable privacy compromises for Americans, seeing as how most people subconsciously treat their car as an extension of their living room.

…that is my point. For the most dangerous activity people in the country do, we avoid laws that would help ascribe blame because everyone wants to be able to break the rules. A pilot gets recorded, regardless of their privacy, because they are responsible for other people’s lives.

Why not drivers? They certainly cause damage to other people. And at a rate far higher than a person doing ANY other activity. It’s not about privacy, it is about wanting to avoid accountability.

The airbag module does record acceleration, seat belt status and the general scenario used to deploy the airbags/tighten the seat belts.

The car situation is at the unholy nexus of bad behavior, money, and privacy. My insurance company would dearly love to have access to the existing telemetry in my vehicle. As an alternative, they continually beg me to install a telemetry device in the OBD port in exchange for lower premiums. But their incentive is so obviously to use the data against me in the event of a claim ("ohho! 31 in a 30 zone! Denied!") that I see no reason to do so.

Dashcams, by contrast, provide the operator with reasonable evidence of other drivers' behavior, and consequently are popular - people pay out of pocket to install them.

I suspect that if laws were passed requiring use of telemetry and dashcams all over, all that would really happen is that rates would rise to reflect new data on how badly most of us drive, and claim denials would skyrocket.

be certain it does at the moment of claim denial. parallel construction for the win

> As an alternative, they continually beg me to install a telemetry device in the OBD port in exchange for lower premiums. But their incentive is so obviously to use the data against me in the event of a claim ("ohho! 31 in a 30 zone! Denied!") that I see no reason to do so.

So your incentive is to pay less money, and their incentive is to pay less money. They figured out a way to do that and still be in business. Obviously, some people might value driving over the speed limit more than the lower premium.

> I suspect that if laws were passed requiring use of telemetry and dashcams all over, all that would really happen is that rates would rise to reflect new data on how badly most of us drive, and claim denials would skyrocket.

You don’t think people would change their behavior if their actions were likelier to result in consequences to their bank account and/or prison time?

Almost everyone is distracted driving to the point that personal motor vehicles are, by far, the leading morbidity and mortality risk for people, especially children.

We go scorched earth when kids are kidnapped or otherwise at risk, but for personal cars, we explicitly look the other way when we have a way to make kids safer.

Quite the double standard people have when they want to break the rules themselves.

It may be relevant that the dash cam is owned by the driver and not the insurance company, and can be selectively used to prove others' fault, but ahem forgotten about if it shows otherwise.

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