Originally Posted by
FlexibleResponse
Very well researched, analyzed and presented, by Sidney Dekker. A belated well done sir!
A shame that the report has taken 10 years to surface. It is still as valid today as it was then.
Just read pages 117-121 "Findings and Conclusions" if you are time constrained.
https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/nl/med...t_s_dekker.pdf
Indeed. And the second to last sentence should be hanging in any office of engineers designing and developing automation systems. Not only in aviation. But especially on the left coast of the US (Yes I'm looking at you Boeing & Tesla!).
The only defense against a designed-in single-failure path, in other words, are the pilots who are warned to mistrust their machine and to stare at it harder. Such a reminder, oriented only at the human operator in the system, is hardly credible after three decades of in-depth research into automated airliner flying and the subtle and pervasive ways in which automation on the flight deck (and particularly its subtle failure) affects human performance (e.g. Wiener & Curry, 1980, Sarter et al., 1997).