In this column, William F. Moroney reports on HF/E issues that have appeared in the press. Contributions are invited. Please send electronic copy with references to moroney@udayton.edu.
Asiana Airlines Says Pilot Flying Too Slow Before Crash. By Bart Jansen, USA Today, March 31, 2014, p. 5A, http://usat.ly/1k9qxb3. Asiana Airlines acknowledged that the “probable cause” of the fatal crash in San Francisco last July was low aircraft speed. The airline contends that “for some unknown reason” the autopilot changed at an altitude of 1,600 feet as the aircraft was on short final approach. “The autopilot changed from pitch mode to flight-level change mode.” Although none of the crew recalls selecting the flight-level change, the engines were set to idle and the autothrottle was disabled. The airline contends that the aircraft displays “led the crew to believe that autothrottle was maintaining the airspeed set by the crew,” whereas Boeing contends that all systems were functioning as expected. Boeing’s chief engineer said, “If pilots are surprised by the automation, they are expected to manually fly the plane.”
NHTSA to Require Backup Cameras on All Vehicles. By Chris Woodward, USA Today, April 4, 2004, p. 1A, http://usat.ly/Oj2DuB. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ruled that all light vehicles (cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans) must have rearview visibility systems by May 1, 2018. NHTSA reported that “210 people a year die and 15,000 are injured in light-vehicle backup incidents, with about 31% of the deaths among children younger than age 5 and 26% among adults older than 70.” The estimated cost to equip a vehicle with both the display and sensors is from $132 to $142, and the cost to simply add a camera is from $43 to $45.
Survive Your Hospital Stay: Medical Errors Are Linked to 440,000 Deaths Each Year. Consumer Reports, May 2014, pp. 44–46, http://bit.ly/1lGCtRu. The article describes Patient Safety America, an organization that “educates people about risks they may face in hospitals.” The organization notes that harm to hospital patients is “the nation’s third leading cause of death, trailing only heart disease and cancer.” The article discusses the difficulty of establishing firm numbers and the morbidity differences between high- and low-scoring hospitals. The metrics used in establishing the hospital safety score and ratings are also described.
Applied Anthropometry Improves Fit. By Bruce Bradtmiller, April 2, 2014, http://bit.ly/1hLd1a3. This article describes the multivariate accommodation modeling techniques for estimating the percentage of the population that would be accommodated based on their anthropometric features. Bradtmiller describes principal component analysis, “a computational technique that transforms a set of data into a set of new variables that are uncorrelated with each other. This is different from the original variables which have correlations among themselves.” These new variables are the principal components. Appropriate manipulation of these new principal components yields an accommodation ellipse that contains the percentage of the population specified by the designer. When one is designing cramped workstations, such as cockpits, virtual individuals on the surface of this ellipse can be positioned in the virtual workspace and their accommodation examined.
Missing Malaysia Jet: Could Sabotage or Hijack Be to Blame? By Alastair Jamieson, http://nbcnews.to/QpCHic. HFES Fellow Diane Damos responded to inquiries about aircrew mental health status checks. Malaysian and U.S. commercial pilots undergo health checks at similar intervals. “The tests are also strictly on the medical side. Issues such as aptitude and suitability are largely left up to the airlines to figure out.” Mental/psychiatric status relies primarily on self-report, “so unless a pilot is honest about an alcohol problem or a psychiatric disorder, there’s no guarantee a problem would be spotted.”
Fatigue’s Role in CTA Crash Debated; Controversy Simmers Over Operator’s Work Schedule. By Juan Perez, Jr., Chicago Tribune, March 30, 2014, http://bit.ly/1hVd4vE. At 2:50 a.m. on March 24, a commuter train overrun at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport resulted in 30 injuries. The operator reported that she dozed off before entering the airport station. The transit authority claimed she had worked 55 hours, whereas the union claimed it was 69 hours. There was also concern about shift changes. The NTSB’s preliminary report of April 10, 2014 (http://1.usa.gov/1nqqZiB), cites two primary areas of concern: operator fatigue, and the fixed trip-stop sensor was located too close to the train bumper post to stop the train before the end of the track. The driver had worked nearly 60 hours over the previous 7 days and was on her third consecutive night shift.
Cars Better, Infotainment Not. Consumer Reports, February 25, 2014, http://usat.ly/Qpz1NJ. Automobiles are improving, but the infotainment systems cause reliability problems and reduced scores for some automakers. Consumer Reports attributes this to feature creep: “Automakers keep adding to the menu of things electronic systems will do — but wind up making them more complicated and difficult to use.” Overly complex interfaces also contributed to low scores.
Additional links:
By the Time Your Car Goes Driverless, You Won’t Know the Difference
http://n.pr/1hJdUiB
Hazards of Daylight Savings Time
http://slate.me/1l2a491
Google Glass: Freaky, Geeky Tech Toy Aims to Save Lives
http://usat.ly/1pa9pnC
Noise Levels and Infant Sleep Machines
http://usat.ly/1kysWd4
Rail Lines Punctuality Versus Safety
http://n.pr/1l2umz9
Ergonomic Motorcycle Design
http://bit.ly/1m7OLT5
Texting Addiction Costing Billions
http://ti.me/1jKTMO5
