[HN Gopher] When Interfaces Kill: What Happened to John Denver (...
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When Interfaces Kill: What Happened to John Denver (1999)
Author : leejoramo
Score : 184 points
Date : 2023-04-19 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asktog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asktog.com)
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Slightly related - https://youtu.be/IQ_6-4MF79U?t=36
| rexsteroxxy wrote:
| Haha nice find
| wkat4242 wrote:
| So... 114 of these crashed according to Wikipedia. That's quite a
| lot for an experimental type. It doesn't say how many were built
| but it's pretty severe.
|
| I agree in this case it was a nonstandard modification that
| caused it but still this does not seem to be the safest type to
| fly.
|
| One thing I also read was that the valve was very hard to turn in
| this case. Which is probably something that he shouldn't have
| taken off with in that state. Especially because this was not
| even a thing that came out of the blue, it was noticed during
| precheck and the owner even said he never turned it during flight
| because it was so difficult. Meaning in my opinion that it's
| wholly unsuitable as a control with critical importance to the
| flight process. Especially for an aircraft without a "both"
| setting.
|
| It looks super cool though, I'll see if it exists for flight
| simulator.
|
| PS the jail number was N555JD, sounds a bit like a movie.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| Most Experimental class crashes are on the first flight.
|
| https://www.flyingmag.com/blogs-fly-wire-ntsb-safety-study-t...
|
| > One of the eye-opening stats was that most accidents
| involving EAB aircraft happen very early in the airplane's
| life, often on the very first flight, and early into that
| flight. Pilots who survived EAB crashes often said the engine
| quit or lost power, or that pitch control on takeoff or
| climbout was not what they anticipated.
|
| Experimental aircraft crashes also account for 25% of GA
| crashes: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/general-aviation-safety
|
| In the US 51% or more of the construction must be done by the
| original owner/pilot and they must also complete the first
| flight and subsequent test flights themselves. These test
| flights must follow a plan submitted by the pilot and approved
| by the FAA, but that is a fairly routine/templated process when
| building from a known kit. If your build deviates from the
| standard kit you can expect the FAA to require a longer/more
| rigorous test flight plan.
|
| The test plan is usually focused on verifying the engine and
| flight controls operate as expected and documenting the stall
| speed/characteristics for that specific airframe.
| edrxty wrote:
| That's around 1 in 8 registered airframes. The derived designs
| were even worse, 6 of 31 berkuts have crashed.
|
| Ultimately a big factor is they aren't usually built as kit
| planes but rather full scratch builds. Each builder is
| independently sourcing materials and composites are very
| unforgiving. Kit planes are generally not that bad as the
| number of ways you can fail in construction is relatively well
| bounded and there's a lot of feedback into the design side to
| mitigate these common errors. I'm working on an RV8 and the
| errata is really something to behold. It's an older 90s design
| but the factory is still changing parts out on me occasionally
| as they discover issues. This is much more in line with how
| certified aircraft work so it stands to reason that they would
| enjoy a better safety record.
| tomohawk wrote:
| We got a new car. It comes with a touch screen instead of
| physical controls. We really wanted to avoid the screen, but
| ended up settling on the least offensive / most likely usable for
| us car vehicle. There was nothing out there in new car land that
| we liked.
|
| It is no longer safe doing simple things such as turning on/off
| recirculation.
|
| We like fresher air, so generally want recirculation off.
| However, it is not uncommon to see a truck in front of us
| suddenly belch a lot of smoke.
|
| In the old car, this was no problem. Push the recirc button and
| keep the bad stuff from getting into the car.
|
| In the new car, that would require hitting the correct button
| near the bottom of the screen to cause it to bring up the
| environmental controls, and then hitting the right button near
| the now top of the screen to toggle the recirc. Totally unsafe
| when in traffic.
|
| Add to that the settings that don't stay set every time you turn
| off the car, requiring manually going through and setting things
| up - it's not only unsafe but horrible.
| abraae wrote:
| Our new Hyundai Ioniq 5 does this.
|
| It's a beautiful vehicle on many ways. But as so often, the
| desire to use touch controls has compromised the ability to
| drive without taking eyes off the road
|
| The most egregious example is turning off the climate control.
| I need to look down and locate the "fan down" control, which is
| small and on a touch screen with no tactile features, then
| click it repeatedly until reaching zero and the air stops.
|
| Piss poor design and dangerous for one of the most frequently
| performed tasks.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| I find it interesting that America's product liability
| attorneys, the same who got the Piper Cub declared an unsafe
| design and more or less shut down the light aircraft industry,
| are so utterly ineffectual against the vastly more pervasive
| threat to public safety of such eyes-off-the-road design
| perversions applied to essential controls.
| boredumb wrote:
| It's amazing how car manufacturers have captured the
| frustration of navigating through your locked mobile device to
| do something arbitrary while driving and embedded that
| experience directly into the dashboard.
| elzbardico wrote:
| We have laws against using phones while driving for very good
| reasons everyone understands.
|
| And then car manufacturers decide to make turning Air
| Condition on and off into a experience as much distracting as
| using a smartphones, so they can save a couple hundred
| dollars in a 30.000 dollars vehicle.
|
| And because accidents caused by stupid car UIs are not as
| obvious an newsworthy as texting and driving, no politician
| has decided out that pushing for legislation for tactile
| controls can give him votes, so, nothing is done,
| legislation-wise, to curb this practice.
| boredumb wrote:
| I think the, maybe contrarian, argument for this is that
| while a lot of the previously physical controls are now
| obnoxious to find there are a lot of features involving
| music, phone and maps that if they weren't on the dash
| people would be go ahead and just be using their arguably
| more dangerous phone to control.
|
| There needs to be both dashboard screens and physical
| controls and knobs, if done right it would even look more
| "sleek" than the pure touch screen dash displays they're
| producing now.
| tivert wrote:
| > And then car manufacturers decide to make turning Air
| Condition on and off into a experience as much distracting
| as using a smartphones, so they can save a couple hundred
| dollars in a 30.000 dollars vehicle.
|
| Do they really save "a couple of _hundred_ dollars " by
| replacing physical controls with touchscreens? I would
| guess they'd save less than a hundred per car.
|
| Making serious user compromises to save a few pennies is
| totally something companies do, but I think they
| touchscreen fad is a bit more complicated than that. I
| think there's also an aesthetic factor, where they're
| chasing a "minimalist" and "high tech" look--which in
| recent years has meant flat surfaces and screens.
|
| IMHO, it would help a lot of buttons and knobs start to be
| seen as a kind of desirable luxury feature instead of "old
| fashioned."
| bluGill wrote:
| Cars never bought the cheap buttons as they wear out too
| quick. So each button is $.50 each for a good button.
| Then the have $3 of wire added to the wiring harness. Add
| $.20 for the connectors (they use the more expensive
| sealed connectors now). Each button is installed by hand
| on the car, so add some cost for labor. It all adds up.
| Note that while I don't know the actual costs of the
| above, I think the above numbers are reasonable.
|
| A touch screen is $100 or less in the quantity they buy,
| and it comes as an assembly that replaces the radio they
| have to install anyway.
|
| GM sold 6 million cars last year. If they can save one
| dollar on each that is $6 million dollars to the bottom
| line.
| zamnos wrote:
| Which is oft repeated refrain, but if GM sells $6 million
| fewer in cars, (which, $6mm/$50k is 120 cars,) then
| they've lost money on the transaction.
|
| GM dumping carplay is going to cost them _way_ more than
| $6mm, and going to cost them way more than 120 sales.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'd guess it's closer to one hundred than multiple
| hundreds, but if you fully replace the HVAC controls with
| touchscreen controls, you save money on a bunch of
| things: hvac controller has fewer pins; you don't need to
| supply the buttons / knobs; you don't need to design,
| build, and install the wiring, harness and connectors for
| the buttons; you don't need to provide a hole for the
| buttons and mounting facilities behind the hole for them;
| you don't need to provide a trim for around the buttons;
| etc, etc.
|
| Buttons cost money for each unit sold, stuffing the
| functionality into a touch screen interface that you're
| almost certainly going to have anyway only costs R&D
| money (and owner frustration, but if everyone is doing
| it....). My favorite though is buttons that only work
| when the touch screen feels like it; my Fiat Chrysler van
| has those for HVAC, you can press the temperature up or
| down buttons, and it'll queue the keypresses until it's
| ready to use them; sometimes many seconds later.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| (nonfatal) accidents sell more cars I suppose
| karaterobot wrote:
| > ...the flaws that led to Denver's death were the work of the
| builder, and had nothing to do with Burt Rutan [the original
| designer]. These flaws led from the builder's sincere desire to
| improve on Rutan's work, a goal that could actually be said to
| have been accomplished from an engineering perspective, even if
| it did kill the pilot.
|
| > We in the PC and web worlds have a lot to learn from this, too.
| We have a lot of bad design floating around that is just as
| perverse as fuel valves that face the wrong way, hidden behind
| firewalls...
|
| I agree that we have a lot of bad design in the PC and Web
| worlds, but I don't think that's the conclusion I'd draw at the
| end of the article. It seems like this a lesson about an engineer
| _changing_ the design during implementation without understanding
| (or while misunderstanding) the original design. Chesterton 's
| fuel valve.
| Yizahi wrote:
| I would say that engineer may have a perfectly valid reason to
| do it, and it may be even a better overall decision, as was
| indeed in this case, preventing fuel pipes in the cockpit as I
| understood from the article.
|
| What is often lacking is testing of significant changes before
| giving final result to the user. And that, together with
| writing documentation and training is often deemed
| uninteresting and boring by engineer rich teams. "Community
| will fill up gaps" is often heard. Well maybe. And maybe
| community will write an accident analysis after something bad
| has happened.
| squokko wrote:
| You don't just get to override Burt Rutan's design because
| you have a "perfectly valid reason to do it." For something
| like an aircraft you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
| that your way is better and you've thought of everything he
| did, or build it to spec.
| cameldrv wrote:
| You do, and this is why the FAA makes you put EXPERIMENTAL
| in big letters in the cockpit. If you want proof beyond a
| reasonable doubt that the plane is safe, get a certified
| aircraft.
|
| IMO the FAA strikes an excellent balance between allowing
| people to make crazy flying contraptions that can be
| dangerous, yet also keeping the civilian flying population
| safe. One place where there can be some unanticipated risk
| though is, like in this case, a homebuilt aircraft that's
| sold to a non-builder.
|
| In any case though, in my opinion, the primary cause of the
| accident was not the fuel selector, it was John Denver's
| lack of preflight. He took off with very little gas in the
| plane, and virtually none on the tank he had selected for
| takeoff.
| Zak wrote:
| It's an experimental amateur-built aircraft. The builder
| gets to do nearly anything they want to do (usually) even
| if it's a bad idea, and most of them have minor changes
| from the original plans.
|
| The design change was possibly an improvement when the only
| user was the builder who was intimately familiar with its
| design, but ended up being a disaster when someone else
| tried to use it under stress.
| mikeryan wrote:
| The testing bit is kind of huge. With most computer UI
| usability is fairly easy to test and, obviously, failures far
| less consequential.
|
| I also wonder if the builder also made a faulty assumption
| that the plane would be flown mostly by experienced pilots in
| which case they may not have done a great job anticipating
| edge cases.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > With most computer UI usability is fairly easy to test
|
| If that's the case, why are computer user interfaces
| generally so bad?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Some user interfaces are bad by design, ala dark
| patterns.
| srehell wrote:
| Because a ton of software shops don't care about UI
| testing. They don't budget time or money for it, or they
| don't even know they need to be doing it.
| mikeryan wrote:
| I probably answered that in my second bit. There's little
| (perceived) downside risk in "bad" UI. So not enough
| people do it.
|
| I don't think it's a fluke that a lot of site
| optimization tools are focused at e-commerce apps and
| sites where the stakes are a bit more tangible.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| John Denver WAS an experienced pilot. Experience can only
| go so far to make up for the unexpected.
| mikeryan wrote:
| True, that being said though, he had only gotten the
| plane the day before and practiced a few touch and go
| landings with it when he got it.
|
| This was his first "real" flight in this plane.
| chmod775 wrote:
| So how is anyone supposed to gain experience in a
| kitplane that kills the inexperienced?
| Nevermark wrote:
| Only fly planes you have flown before?
|
| At college one professor used a particular engineering
| class to weed out students from the engineering program.
| He intentionally made it so challenging it was considered
| its own prerequisite.
|
| I found the practice abhorrent even in that context.
| toss1 wrote:
| If you want to make a change, you must solve the _WHOLE_
| problem, not just the part you want to solve.
|
| You need to make that valve easy to operate, operate in a
| sensible way (flip right to the right fuel tank, not left
| tank, have a 'both' setting, etc.), and make it ergonomically
| work.
|
| In this case, the ergonomic issue could have been solved with
| a "dead pedal" right next to the right rudder. This is a
| fixed surface adjacent to the pedal in the cockpit wall you
| can put your foot on and press. There is one to the left of
| the clutch in most well-setup sportscars. With this, the
| pilot could press and reach around without any input on the
| rudders.
|
| But, this "builder" couldn't be bothered to actually solve
| the problem and he killed a bunch of the pilots using his
| update, including John Denver. Criminal, if you ask me.
| cduzz wrote:
| This highlights the importance of SOPs, training, checklists
| etc.
|
| What's the value of a unit-less fuel gauge? Why not a warning
| light or two per tank and / or a calibrated fuel gauge?
|
| If you want to move the fuel hoses out of the cabin (good
| plan!) move the fuel hoses out of the cabin but leave the
| interface in place and make it electrical; put the mechanical
| switch in the difficult to find place and update the SOP to
| include "if the remote fuel switch fails use the mechanical
| switch in this difficult to reach location"
|
| Engineering around edge cases is hard. Which is just simply
| saying "engineering is hard". Doing things without addressing
| edge cases is just craft.
| WalterBright wrote:
| This kind of thing is where experience makes the
| difference. You're not going to learn these kinds of things
| in college.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's not a misunderstanding of the original design. It's
| ignoring it completely.
|
| It's someone unqualified to be making engineering decisions
| engaging in an absurd level of optimization for one rare (to
| the point of being nonexistant) risk, to the point that they
| made a valve that is part of near constant use in many
| planes...nearly impossible to see or reach.
|
| Alternating what tank you draw from is part of normal aircraft
| operation because otherwise you end up with balance issues.
| Making that valve require contorting oneself and fully
| deflecting a flight control surface is so asinine it defies
| belief.
|
| I don't even understand how the builder thought this was a risk
| in the first place. Fuel lines are always at a minimum
| protected if not run outside the cockpit, ie firewalled.
| buildsjets wrote:
| That's not true at all. My airplane, which is a Part 23
| certified, factory-built aircraft that was made by Grumman-
| American, has numerous fuel lines running through the
| cockpit, and none of them have any fire protection on them,
| not even firesleeving. They are made from aluminum and
| copper, which are not considered intrinsically fireproof.
| That's also the case for every Piper and Cessna aircraft that
| I have worked on, which are typically older CAR-3 certified
| designs.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > He had fuel gauges in the rear of the aircraft, behind the
| pilot, and a mirror (!) used to look at them.
|
| Sounds bizarre but the DC-9 (and MD80 and B717) have a similar
| setup with the magnetic compass.
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-th...
| tivert wrote:
| > Sounds bizarre but the DC-9 (and MD80 and B717) have a
| similar setup with the magnetic compass.
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-th...
|
| The Youtube video linked from that question that actually shows
| the compass setup "isn't available anymore," but I found it
| here:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140323065924/http://www.youtub...
| arprocter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ is the aircraft in
| question
| mcguire wrote:
| The NTSB Report https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-
| repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G...
| lordleft wrote:
| I love John Denver's music and I am still haunted by his death,
| 24 years later. I had no idea his death was likely the result of
| poor user ergonomics. Engineering can kill.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I would recommend not reading the coroner's report on how he
| died. (Chalking this one up to one of my late-night insomniac
| excursions down a rabbit hole.)
|
| At least it was quick. It was absolutely not pretty, though.
|
| He was (is? somewhere? maybe?) an amazing dude who pushed hard to
| get his music accepted
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Imagine if one were building a one-off vehicle and it had a
| critical control placed in an ergonomic spot with flammable fluid
| or maybe hot or high pressure lines routed through the cabin to
| necessarily reach it. What would the response be if they posted
| it to HN, Reddit, Youtube?
|
| They would get harassed endlessly about how dangerous that it.
| You should "never" run fuel through the cabin. You should "never"
| run high pressure hydraulics near an occupant, etc. All sorts of
| low effort comments would be made to score cheap virtue points
| dunking on the builder. It would be one giant safety circle jerk
| complete with clipboards and safety vests.
|
| And that kind of "I know the best practices but I don't deeply
| understand the requirements of this specific implementation"
| kills people, like apparently John Denver. This really should be
| sobering to many here. You could have been that builder. But what
| will we take away from it? Not the hard uncomfortable lesson to
| keep your mouth shut and don't touch anything in the name of
| "best practices" until you truly know the ins and outs of the
| application. Heavens no. We'll just make out our UIs suck a
| little less and call it good. That's much easier.
| Arrath wrote:
| > You should "never" run fuel through the cabin. You should
| "never" run high pressure hydraulics near an occupant, etc.
|
| Hah, I wish. I've run older construction equipment where all
| the control levers worked by actuating valves directly on the
| various hydraulic lines, with easily a couple dozen in- and
| out-let hoses routed through the cabin and through the control
| panel, each one full of high pressure, high temperature
| hydraulic fluid.
|
| The worst was in the machines with inoperative A/C in the
| summer, those hoses might as well have been big radiator fins
| in the cabin.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| In aircraft crashes, there are usually a series of contributing
| factors to the crash.
|
| I totally agree that the valve's design/position was the major
| one. But he shouldn't have found himself in a situation where he
| had to change fuel tanks just few hundred feet in the air.
|
| I don't mean that in any bad way towards Denver. The world is a
| poorer place without him in it.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| > Just as with Unix, just as with DOS, the more confounding
| everything is, the better it is
|
| Unix == confounding?
|
| I'm sorry but even as a complete n00b and needing to buy "Unix in
| a Nutshell" in the early 1990's, Unix refreshingly made complete
| sense compared to DOS+QEMM+win3.1+IRQ's+spend all your time
| tuning and trying to get things to maybe work. It was like night
| and day.
|
| Yes there were things to learn (hence the book) but it was easy
| and just worked.
|
| Edit: referring to SunOS/Solaris on Sun hardware in the early
| 1990's vs DOS
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes, few would dispute the idea that in 1999 UNIX was a paragon
| of usability engineering.
| [deleted]
| low_tech_love wrote:
| What? A unix terminal is literally one of the most fantastic,
| beautiful, and long-standing interface designs in human history.
| kej wrote:
| Tog is pretty famously on the "the mouse is faster than the
| keyboard" side of the debate, so it doesn't really surprise me
| that he's not enamored with terminals and shells.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| "These flaws led from the builder's sincere desire to improve on
| Rutan's work, a goal that could actually be said to have been
| accomplished from an engineering perspective, even if it did kill
| the pilot."
|
| Tog does not mince words.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It does look like this was a common change though considering
| there were 2 similar accidents before. Perhaps a community
| forum where this modification was proposed?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IIUC the two similar incidents were in _the exact same plane_
| (but did not cause a crash) not in a plane with a similar
| modification.
|
| [edit]
|
| > According to other pilots who were familiar with the
| airplane and/or had flown it, to change the fuel selector a
| pilot had to: 1) Remove his hand from the right side control
| stick if he was hand flying the aircraft; 2) Release the
| shoulder harness; 3) Turn his upper body 90 degrees to the
| left to reach the handle; and 4) Turn the handle to another
| position. Two pilots shared their experiences of having
| inadvertently run a fuel tank dry with nearly catastrophic
| consequences because of the selector and sight gauge
| locations[1].
|
| Note "familiarity with the airplane" not "a similar Long EZ"
| which they use later to talk about investigators
| inadvertently depressing the rudder pedal when trying to use
| the valve.
|
| 1: https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-
| denver...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > If you approach software design the way experts in commercial
| and military cockpit human factors approach their craft, you will
| end up with designs that are fast, familiar, and forgiving. Such
| designs would be a refreshing change in the ghastly world of PC
| software. They'd be a refreshing change in the world of general
| aviation, too.
|
| This completely ignores hundreds or even thousands of required
| flight hours. If I required my users to train for hundreds of
| hours before using my software by themselves, I would make all
| sorts of different UI design choices. In fact, a command line or
| text UI interface might actually be the most productive. However,
| that is not the case.
|
| Commercial and military cockpit design are all designed for the
| efficiency of the expert (especially military cockpits, since you
| do not want a "Are you sure" confirmation dialog during a
| dogfight).
| tivert wrote:
| >> If you approach software design the way experts in
| commercial and military cockpit human factors approach their
| craft, you will end up with designs that are fast, familiar,
| and forgiving. Such designs would be a refreshing change in the
| ghastly world of PC software. They'd be a refreshing change in
| the world of general aviation, too.
|
| > This completely ignores hundreds or even thousands of
| required flight hours. If I required my users to train for
| hundreds of hours before using my software by themselves, I
| would make all sorts of different UI design choices. In fact, a
| command line or text UI interface might actually be the most
| productive. However, that is not the case.
|
| Not necessarily. Your objection seems to be relevant to the
| "fast" part, but there's a lot of software that (for instance)
| just ignores familiar established patterns because the designer
| wanted to be different. It almost all cases, it would be a
| great improvement if they just stopped doing that.
| SilasX wrote:
| Since no one's mentioned it, another interesting incidence of
| this was when Anton Yelchin (who played Chekov in the newer Star
| Trek movies) died from mistakenly putting his Jeep into neutral
| when he thought he put it in park. Chrysler was using a new (and
| overclever) shifter design where you couldn't easily confirm by
| look or feel what gear it was in, and so was prone to being
| misidentified.
|
| Yelchin death reporting https://filmindustry.network/star-trek-
| actor-anton-yelchin-d...
|
| Consumer Reports article about the issues behind the recall:
| https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/fca-recalls-confu...
| buildsjets wrote:
| I rented one of these Jeeps a few months before Anton Yelchin's
| death, and my first reaction that was that it was an accident
| waiting to happen, that I expected to see a rash of senior
| citizens driving though storefronts because of it, and that I
| would avoid parking near them in the future.
|
| One of the biggest issues is that not only does the gearshift
| lever not move to indicate the selected gear, but that the
| gearshift lever has multiple modes of operation - a short press
| would select reverse, but a long press would select drive.
| lp4vn wrote:
| Incredible that a site about design, interfaces and usability
| looks like a geocities page from the 90's. If the author is
| reading this page, sorry but someone had to tell you this.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jmclnx wrote:
| Interesting read, I remember the crash but never heard what
| happened.
|
| Quote of the day from the article about the early days of Autos:
|
| >Car fires are a common enough occurrence along America's
| freeways. A gas line breaks under the hood and soon the engine is
| engulfed in flames. The cure? Pull over, get out, find a long
| stick, and start roasting marshmallows.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| When I read that my first thought was "I bet most car fires are
| electrical or exhaust related, not from a random gas line
| leak."
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Petrol boils off too quickly to be a massive problem, it's
| vapour and gone before anything happens.
|
| Brake fluid has a high boiling point, a low flash point, and
| it's sticky. Burst a brake pipe and spray that onto a hot
| exhaust and you've got a great source of fire.
|
| I know from personal experience that if you can get the
| exhaust manifold hot enough (like, dull red) and you pop a
| coolant line, the water will boil into steam leaving the
| glycol antifreeze which will burn with an acrid greenish
| flame.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I had a friend who had 3 cars burst into flames inside of two
| years.
|
| It was the strangest thing, engines caught on fire out of the
| blue. Admittedly, he was pretty poor (we all were at that
| time) and his cars were old beaters, but that didn't explain
| how three different cars could have their engines set on fire
| out of the blue in such a short time period.
|
| The strangeness of this situation finally revealed itself
| when I witnessed him checking the oil on his car. It was low,
| (they all burned oil) and he had some on hand to top it up.
|
| I watched him open a bottle and dump it into the intake,
| spilling copious amounts before getting it settled in.
|
| He was basting his engines in oil. No one ever taught him to
| use a funnel or told him he might want to clean up spills
| like this.
|
| When you make something idiot proof, the universe makes a
| better idiot.
| Infernal wrote:
| When you say he dumped the oil into the intake... are you
| using the word intake to mean the place in the valve cover
| where the oil is supposed to go?
|
| To me, when you say intake, I immediately am thinking of
| the air intake.
| mikestew wrote:
| Not OP, but I'm going to guess confusion between "intake"
| and the hole in the valve cover where oil goes. I say
| this because I imagine the result of pouring it into the
| intake is a non-starting car, not a fire. Cars don't run
| on 10W-40.
| Infernal wrote:
| Well the comment about it "burning a lot of oil" could
| also be attributed to splashing some oil in the air
| intake. And it might eventually leak somewhere hot enough
| to burn.
|
| I agree odds are intake means... oil orifice in this
| case. But I figure we're already in car abuse land might
| as well see how deep the rabbit intake goes.
| peteradio wrote:
| > Cars don't run on 10W-40.
|
| Why come?
| mikestew wrote:
| I imagine the fuel injectors have a hard time vaporizing
| something so viscous.
|
| Feel free to put a few quarts/litres of 10W-40 in your
| crankcase, however.
| freedude wrote:
| Ironically, if the OP had used straight 30w or 20-50w it
| would have run out of the car slower causing the car to
| take longer to catch fire because of less buildup of
| spilled oil.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure they do. Not very well, and you mix it with gas, but
| they will run. 2 cycle engines sometimes run 16:1 ratios
| of gas to oil (an engine old enough to run 16:1 was
| speced before modern two stroke oils and so they meant
| regular engine oil - though oils then were very different
| from modern engine oils). Up until the 1980s a car with
| more than 70,000 miles on it could be assumed to burn a
| quart every few hundred miles.
|
| I've never tried it, but I think my 1930 all-fuel tractor
| could run on 10w-40. I've run it on "it used to be
| gasoline 4 years ago", ethanol, and diesel.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I kinda doubt that. Automotive oil will cook off long
| before it ignites. You need to introduce liquid oil to a
| red hot object to get flame as a result. The chemical
| properties that lend themselves to oil that lives a long
| time in an engine or transmission also result in really
| high ignition points. If spilling oil could reliably cause
| a fire you'd see OEMs casting drip rails into things in
| order to prevent paths direct from leaky gasket to exhaust
| components.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I understand your doubt, but I assure you that I did not
| come onto the internet to lie today.
|
| After I saw this I pulled him aside and asked to take a
| look at his engine and there was a thick layer of baked
| on oil on the side with the oil filler, and that oil was
| contaminated with thick clumps of dust and dirt from a
| general lack of maintenance, which in retrospect might
| have acted like a wick.
|
| It took a full can of degreaser spray and a lot of
| vigorous wiping to remove the majority of it, and after
| doing that along with the exhortation to use a funnel
| when adding oil, the car engine did not burst into flame
| again. (He had become very capable in quickly detecting
| and extinguishing engine fires before they caused enough
| damage to the vehicle to disable it)
|
| That car lasted a good two years before he wrecked and
| totaled it.
| Arrath wrote:
| And maybe not placing oil filters in little alcoves
| entirely surrounded by exhaust piping.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The first "new" car I ever bought had a rubber gas line under
| the hood that was never properly clipped into place. It
| rubbed against the edge of the clip until eventually it cut
| through the line causing a leak. Fortunately I smelled the
| gasoline before it caught fire.
|
| I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are
| the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and
| finds the lemons.
| sonofhans wrote:
| > I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they
| are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation
| and finds the lemons.
|
| Yes, exactly, right there with you. A good car will still
| be good after 10 years of use. Any car that isn't worth
| buying at that point isn't worth buying to begin with.
| peteradio wrote:
| Fortunately gasoline will generally evaporate in moderate
| heat rather than ignite! Unless there is another ignition
| source which might be common enough on a poorly maintained
| vehicle. I've driven cross-country with a leaky fuel rail,
| would not recommend!
| giantg2 wrote:
| I assume all fires in EVs are electrical.
|
| I doubt there are very many true electrical fires in ICE
| vehicles. Even if there is an arc, you need some kind of fuel
| to get a real fire going. Sometimes that might be the
| rubber/plastic components. But I feel like it's more likely
| to just be the ignition source for a fuel leak.
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Basically all of the fire recalls on ICE vehicles in the
| recent past have been electrical in nature.
| peteradio wrote:
| Plastic burns pretty well, my 1991 F150 had a fire under
| the hood that was entirely electrical.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Many automotive plastics have fire retardant additives.
| It's certainly possible to have an entirely electrical
| fire. I just think it's a much lower rate.
| peteradio wrote:
| I don't know what to tell ya, I assume I'm not an
| exceptional case. Maybe the characteristics change after
| 25+ years of use and multiple hundreds of thousands of
| miles.
| mikeryan wrote:
| I'd assume both. Leak to provide the fuel and a spark to
| ignite it.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| This is why I carry a fire extinguisher in my car
| giantg2 wrote:
| I used to do this. I redid my fuel lines and needed the
| correct type of extinguisher in case something happened
| during that. Then I just kept it in the car for years.
| icelancer wrote:
| I know many of my friends who used to race cars and needed
| one in the car for certification/regulation continue to do so
| in their civilian cars to this day. Once you've done it
| because you have to, you realize that it might be a good
| reason to do it when you simply can.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Right next to the marshmallows.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If your car catches on fire, you don't want it back. Get
| everybody away from it and call the fire department. Hold
| your phone horizontally when you film it for YouTube.
| vidanay wrote:
| A big thick column of black smoke from a carbeque might be
| the only time I would forgive someone for holding the phone
| vertically.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| I actually used the fire extinguisher I used to carry in my
| '79 Buick LeSabre to put out a fire but I ended up regretting
| it.
|
| Smoke started pouring out from under the hood, so I pulled
| over and popped the hood and saw a blazing fire. I ran in a
| panic to the trunk, got the extinguisher, and put out the
| fire.
|
| It turned out that the air conditioner compressor had seized
| up and stopped turning, causing the belt to overheat and
| catch fire. The fix was simple: remove the remains of the
| belt and everything was fine. Roll down the windows when it's
| hot.
|
| If I had let the car burn out and be totaled I would have
| saved a lot of trouble, including endless transmission leaks
| and a busted U-joint which led to my coasting to the side of
| the road with the driveshaft (connected only at the front)
| dragging and bouncing and throwing up showers of sparks down
| the freeway.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Had a similar thought, if the car is empty it's a different
| consideration to when it's loaded up with my camping gear
| or other possessions.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| Yeah. I started carrying the fire extinguisher because my
| parents' full-size Chevy van burned up with all of their
| camping supplies, clothes, guns, etc. from a three-month
| roadtrip. Also melted the front of their trailer before
| the highway patrol arrived. Brave/insane CHP officer
| pulled the propane tanks off of the trailer before they
| blew.
|
| I had nothing of value in the Buick.
|
| Ironic, as Ms. Morissette would say.
|
| My parents bought the Buick from my grandmother to drive
| home to Virginia after the van fire, and they gave it to
| me for my senior year of college. My fire was a couple of
| years after graduation.
| geocrasher wrote:
| There's such a thing as over-optimization. So many people cannot
| see past their own justifications. Had the original builder of
| the aircraft stuck to the plans instead of trying to be clever, a
| life would have been saved.
| greedo wrote:
| If you read the crash report, it's pretty clear that Denver was
| both aware of this design flaw and failed to adequately fill the
| tanks.
|
| https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver...
| w10-1 wrote:
| John Denver failed to fill his gas tank -- twice.
|
| Multiple Long-EZ's that failed over water ditched without
| injury.
|
| About 95% of all private plane crashes are due to running out
| of fuel or flying into clouds. It is ridiculously easy to do
| neither: fill your tank, and turn around.
|
| As for design changes, builders have tried hundreds of
| modifications to the Long-EZ design, and many of the successful
| ones are now the standard of care.
|
| Indeed, unlike software generally, there is usually a strong
| and clear standard of care for each experimental plane model,
| as voiced by the builders with the most cogent explanations
| coupled with their own flying safety record (benevolent
| dictators eating their own dog food). The experimental aircraft
| community differs precisely in that everyone who flies their
| own plane is not the chicken but the pig (and builders who talk
| a great game are ignored).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > About 95% of all private plane crashes are due to running
| out of fuel or flying into clouds. It is ridiculously easy to
| do neither: fill your tank, and turn around.
|
| Denver was told by a technician that the tanks had "less than
| half in the right tank and less than a quarter in the left
| tank" These are each 26 gallon tanks. The technician was
| wrong because the gauges were non-linear (and had no
| markings). Denver should have checked himself (and hopefully
| knew the gauges were non-linear), but either didn't check or
| didn't know. 10+ gallons (what he likely thought he had in
| the right tank) is more than enough for the flight he was
| attempting.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| [flagged]
| ubermonkey wrote:
| It's super weird to me that the article just presents as an
| article of faith that the NTSB inappropriately blames pilots.
| mcguire wrote:
| There are a couple of reasons for this. First, unless the
| aircraft just suddenly fell apart, the pilot is always involved
| somehow. For example, in this case, the direct cause of the
| crash was the pilot providing a hard right (?) rudder input.
|
| Second, and more cynically, the representation of pilots in the
| investigation is the weakest (and identifying the pilots as at
| fault causes the least economic consequences on everybody). For
| example, if you look back to when Airbus introduced the fly-by-
| wire system with moded inputs, their planes were dropping like
| bricks. (Including by the plane's test pilot at the Paris air
| show.) However, most (all?) of those incidents were assigned to
| pilot error in spite of the fact that an airplane that would
| change its flight characteristics or even conflict with pilot
| actions was a fun new thing.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The airshow one looks very much like pilot error... not a
| great example.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q
|
| You have an experienced pilot who knew the plane and its
| safety systems disable alpha floor protection before
| completely botching the approach. He could have aborted and
| gone around to get set up properly. But he didn't.
|
| Instead he dropped to 30 feet on idle engine thrust, in a
| high drag configuration, and didn't press the TOGA button
| until 4 seconds before the crash. That's not enough time for
| the engine to spool up from idle.
|
| I don't support prosecuting pilots except in the most
| egregious cases and I think involuntary manslaughter was the
| right call here.
|
| Edit: The pilot claimed to have done this maneuver 20 times
| prior to the crash.
| Zak wrote:
| It is weird, particularly when the NTSB report lists the
| following factors before the pilot's errors:
|
| Occurrence #1: LOSS OF ENGINE POWER(TOTAL) - NONMECHANICAL
| Phase of Operation: CRUISE
|
| Findings
|
| 1. (F) FUEL SYSTEM,SELECTOR/VALVE
|
| 2. (F) ACFT/EQUIP,INADEQUATE CONTROL LOCATION - OWNER/BUILDER
|
| 3. (F) FUEL SYSTEM,SELECTOR/VALVE - UNMARKED
|
| 4. (F) ENGINE INSTRUMENTS,FUEL QUANTITY GAGE - INADEQUATE
|
| 5. (F) ENGINE INSTRUMENTS,FUEL QUANTITY GAGE - UNMARKED
|
| It then goes on to discuss the pilot's decisions that
| contributed to running out of fuel: failing to adequately plan
| and prepare for the flight, failing to refuel the aircraft, and
| setting the fuel selector incorrectly.
|
| The next section discusses the actual loss of control, which is
| 100% on the pilot; he was too distracted trying to turn the
| glider he was actually flying back in to the motorized aircraft
| he wanted to be flying to _fly it_. That may sound harsh, but
| engine failure is a significant risk in single-engine aircraft,
| which pilots are generally expected to prepare for.
| pkamb wrote:
| > The valve: The builder not only placed the valve in a non-
| standard location [behind the pilot's left shoulder], he also
| rotated it in such a way that turning the valve to the right
| turned on the left fuel tank. This ensured that a pilot
| unfamiliar with the aircraft, upon hearing the engine begin
| missing and spotting in his mirror that the left fuel tank was
| empty, would attempt to rotate the fuel valve to the right, away
| from the full tank, guaranteeing his destruction.
|
| So the builder intended you turn the backwards valve right,
| towards the left wing, and that activates the left fuel tank?
| This certainly sounds like a better human interface than turning
| the backwards valve left, towards the right wing, and activating
| the left tank.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Good point. I guess it's the pilot muscle memory with counter
| clockwise being left and clockwise being right that screws this
| concept up.
|
| If the valve is in front of the pilot both methods match, if
| it's behind they are opposite. I could imagine this issue only
| becoming apparent in such a situation.
|
| I think this aircraft should really have had a both setting
| though. Normally the fuel selector is only needed in case of
| leaks or unbalance.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Knowing nothing of flight except what I know from my pilot
| friends, my impression of Burt Rutan was that he makes killer
| planes because he was involved with the VSS Enterprise and then
| this and some other one.
|
| Of course that's unfair because he's in the business of making
| experimental planes.
|
| What I find curious is that this seems like the sort of field
| that would benefit from open-source design - flaws in design
| wouldn't be ported from other planes and shared visibility would
| benefit all. That makes me wonder if open-source software was
| inevitable after all. If it weren't for a bunch of early
| eccentrics, would we be primarily running binaries that we cannot
| edit? Good for them. Lucky to be in this field.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| Interesting article - but I find it odd that something published
| on a site devoted to interaction design should have such small
| text - and full-width at that. Currently using Firefox on Windows
| - I don't often have to touch the zoom setting, but for this one
| I had to crank it to 150% to read the article comfortably.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| While looking at the site, I dropped my phone on my toe,
| bruising it severely. Now I have to go to the hospital, all
| thanks to bad design.
| function_seven wrote:
| Five Whys!
|
| Why did you go to the hospital? "Because I severely bruised
| my toe."
|
| Why? "Because I dropped my phone on it."
|
| Why? "Because I was trying to hold it with 3 fingers, while
| using my thumb and forefinger to attempt a zoom pinch thing."
|
| Why? "Because the text on this ergonomics article was too
| hard to read."
|
| Why? "Because the web in 1999 was a very different place."
|
| Verdict: Your fault for trying to read a computer website on
| a telephone. :)
| asdfman123 wrote:
| This is victim blaming
| mhandley wrote:
| Probably looked fine on an 800x600 screen when the article was
| written.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pcurve wrote:
| John Denver was an experienced pilot who owned multiple planes
| with 2,700 flight hours. Unfortunately, on this particular
| experimental plane with an odd setup, just an hour or two.
| tivert wrote:
| > And, indeed, the NTSB, as per its long history of setting aside
| findings, human factors or otherwise, that might conflict with a
| verdict of pilot error, ruled that the responsibility for this
| crash lay with the pilot.
| gffrd wrote:
| Edward Tufte would like a word ...
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