There is a lot of mention on the Hudson ditching.
Didn't the automation onboard made the ditching easier? I'm not talking about the 'ditch switch' but the alpha protection.
Wouldn't the touch-down be better if the alpha-protection had a sub-mode for ditching, to maintain energy and adjust for the optimal AoA on splash-down? Alpha protection was operating as designed, had it been designed to splash-down at specific AoA and RoD it would have done that pretty good, and assisted even more an excellent pilot.
The pilot is hero because he made a decision and saved the day, but how many would have called him a hero if something had gone wrong in the ditching? Half of this forum (at least) would have been arguing about turning to TEB, which the report now says that could be reachable. A computer would have made it to TEB, a good pilot in an automation augmented plane saved the day, another pilot might have not made it.
Like others said before, an average driver wont break better than the standard ABS in a car. If you are a race driver you don't need ABS. But I'm sure that even race drivers commute with ABS equipped cars.
Of course the you need to push the brake pedal, otherwise a 'perfectly serviceable' automobile crashes.
The more 'perfectly serviceable' automobiles crash, the more sense it makes to automate automobile braking by adding cameras, lidars, RF range finders etc etc.
Sorry for the ABS drift, but have been saved by ABS many times, though I've crashed because I haven't pushed the pedal when I should have.
Delete if irrelevant.