Re: Air France Flight 447 accident
"The computer was in control until it got conflicting readings from the sensors and gave up control."
What amazes me is that Airbus pitots don't have automatic sensors to turn on the heaters under icing conditions.
Or that it didn't use inertial/GPS nav input as well as the mechanical airspeed inputs (there are a number of ways of estimating speed sans pitots and pilots are taught them. This should be part of the flight control program too)
The biggest bug is that programmers didn't anticipate something like this and make allowances for it. There are a number of cases of crashes caused by programmers working on the basis that "a pilot would never do this in real world conditions", only to find out that pilots DO. The same issue will happen with cars, but you have to factor in the wildcard of erratically controlled vehicles/pedestrians in the immediate vicinity. I do tend to wonder when the first instance of road rage against an automated vehicle will occur.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
