Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms The operation in some new cars is getting worse.

It all comes down to money in the end. Is it cheaper to fix the problem or just pay for the possible result of the problems.

That's ok as a theory until the inconvenience of lost lives gets in the way of the bean counters

It's a little more tricky amortizing those costs as Boeing will soon find out..

So the answer from car makers is to get rid of the smaller touchscreen and make a fully integrated touch dashboard that is in effect like having a 40 inch TV in front of you.

It is a matter of time before they reflect everything off the windscreen in the manner of a heads up display. I have been waiting for this and would welcome it. Never take your eyes off the road and no excuse to miss your speed etc?

The issue I have found to making this work has been using input or gesture to interact with it, it's clunky would be polite. The current crop of luxo-barge (7 Series etc) already have gesture control with the touchscreen however it is more variable than valuable from my experience. The same is true of using it in computer environments so far. I have tried several of the options and found them to be blunt even after repeated training and practice (3 months with one) The good news is that all the engineering going into assisted reality and virtual reality will probably benefit this moving forwards.

The current move to glass cockpits in cars with no buttons feels like it is a little too fast but then the art of selling new cars is to have something the old one did not and then cause a trade-up. A little like phones. 1 more pixel on the camera, new colour, different charger socket, tweak of the software. They want you to buy the newest one not a secondhand one. Interestingly the trade seems to want you to buy the second hand one as there is more margin in it.

Decision theory has 2 elements to it, basically in that you can not make a decision in perfect knowledge, because as soon as you make a decision you change the environment, so you have to make a decision based on imperfect knowledge (best available information) and then refine the decision over time. Secondly, 'tell me how you will measure me and I'll tell you how I will react'' This second element is very important as it steers an individuals actions to the controls, criteria and forms of measurement being exercised on the individual, or organisation. In essence the level of FAA control determined how Boeing would eventually react.....

Very important to understand when setting goals, performance reviews, bonus schemes, overarching control environments etc. For example if you incentivise someone based on bottom line profitability then they will react accordingly and maximise the short term bottom line often at the cost of longevity and sustainability of the organisation.....In the same way the .FAA should have known that Boeing actions would take advantage of those freedoms of self certification extended to them.

Often nothing to do with bean counters (they just blame them) when the commercial viability of the engineering (or whatever discipline) solution comes under scrutiny. Very few commercial organisations survive in the market place (and against their competitors), in which they operate in, if they are not commercially viable. So the commercial pressures come from within the organisation and externally from their competitors, customers etc,..



regards

From what I have read about this sorry tale of loss of life I am just amazed that the FAA appeared to hand over the final safety checking over to Boeing on a plate, that is never going to end well with the right decisions over passenger safety and that is a very worrying thing.

I see it as a failing of the FAA as Boeing were only doing what any other business would given the opportunity I imagine.

The biggest failure is that controls should be in the system (checks and balances eg peer review) and not where ever possible based on the personal integrity of the individual, when say signing off eg a certification, individuals/personnel can change over time and so can their concept and application of personal integrity.

regards

The Trump administration cut funding to the FAA so it cut its costs by delegating final approval. This "helped" businesses by cutting bureaucracy.... Yes, right.

Something else we can lay at his door

I imagine the FAA are very much the same as our CAA and want things done properly as respected professional organisations so their frustration must have been unbearable.

''
The NY Times wrote that after “intense lobbying to Congress by industry” resulted in the FAA delegating more authority to manufacturers in 2005, an approach that FAA officials believed would streamline approvals, some staff became concerned that they were no longer able to track what was happening inside Boeing. According to the Times, interviews with over a dozen current and former FAA and Boeing employees have shown that regulators “never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS [Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System] when they approved the plane in 2017.”

During the 737 Max’s development, the NY Times wrote, the FAA assigned two engineers to oversee flight control systems at its Boeing Aviation Safety Oversight Office that other staff say were poorly qualified for the roles. An early version of MCAS cleared a Boeing safety review and the system “didn’t prompt additional scrutiny from the F.A.A. engineers,” two FAA officials told the paper. But the FAA delegated further review of the system to Boeing in 2016 even as it made significant alterations to MCAS—
When company engineers analyzed the change, they figured that the system had not become any riskier, according to two people familiar with Boeing’s discussions on the matter. They assumed that pilots would respond to a malfunction in three seconds, quickly bringing the nose of the plane back up. In their view, any problems would be less dangerous at low speeds.

So the company never submitted an updated safety assessment of those changes to the agency. In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking.

According to the Times, the FAA assumed the “system was insignificant” and further allowed Boeing to remove mentions of it from pilots’ manuals; the FAA “did not mention the software in 30 pages of detailed descriptions noting differences between the Max and the previous iteration of the 737.”

This had been going on for decades, it is not fair to point the finger solely at Trump he wasn't in office till Jan 2017, Congress in 2017 approved even further delegating of FAA authority.to manufacturers....

regards