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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Reclining seat death
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 03-23-2018 01:28 PM
Look, this was an unfortunate tragedy. The guy had a wife & kids, etc.
But in the original article I read, it made clear that the seat didn't kill
him, he died later of a heart attack. So the death certificate is most
likely going to list cause of death as " myocardial infarction", and not
"head caught in theater seat", which generates a lot more online clicks.
Yes, I know he wound up in the ER because of the seat incident, but
that's not what killed him. We don't know his medical history. He may
have already had a bad ticker. This is exactly what happened to a guy
I worked with about 10years ago. There was a minor kitchen fire in his
apartment one night. The building was evacuated, but nobody, was
injured, and damage was confined to his kitchen.
But 12hrs later, he was dead. The stress of the incident caused him
to have a heart attack afterwards. He ate mostly a 'junk food' diet,
was a heavy smoker, and was noticeably overweight, all of which I'm
sure contributed to his demise. But- - it wasn't the fire that killed him.
And so, the way I see it, the hi-tech theater seat is innocent until
proven guilty.
That being said, it does seem odd that the seats didn't have some
sort of safety sensors or "emergency stop" function.
At one of the private screening rooms I work at, it's common practice
on days where there are two consecutive screenings, to have someone
go around and return all the seat arms to the "up" position. This takes
several minutes since there are about 150 seats.
Once, when a guy was in repairing the upholstery on one of the seats,
I asked why they didn't make some sort of simple spring-loaded solenoid
device which would automatically put all the seat arms up at the push of
a button. He replied something to the effect that his company had
considered this, but then decided that there were too many "liability issues"
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-23-2018 01:47 PM
A short time ago, the fuel line on my VW Beetle froze up on a sub-zero winter morning. It would run for about 30 seconds and rumble to a stop.
Yeah, I was stupid for letting my tank get below half-full in the winter...water condensation, ya' know!
All it takes is a bottle of dry gas to clear it right up but I was only about a mile from home.
I was able to start the engine, drop the clutch, quickly accelerate to about 30 mph before it stalled, step on the clutch, let it coast, restart the engine and repeat the process five or six times until I could get the car home.
It was too cold to get out and push. Besides, I was driving alone. It would have been a PITA to push and steer at the same time! I couldn't leave the car on the side of the road on a busy street for more than a short time.
If I couldn't limp home like that, I probably would have had to call a tow truck.
Imagine if I was heading down a steep, mountain road and I lost my brakes? With a manual, there is a chance that I could put it into low gear and use engine breaking to stop the car before it goes over a cliff.
Yeah, it will blow up the engine and grind the gears into metal shavings but, at least, I would be alive.
If you want to talk about minutia, yes, we can argue back and forth all day but the real point is that, in ANY automated system, there ***MUST***MUST***MUST*** be a way for a human to take over and shut the system down in case of emergency.
Convenience? Efficiency? Ease of use? I'm all for it!
Machines can do many things better-faster-cheaper than humans! 100% in agreement!
All of this does NOT obviate the need for there to be an "Off Switch!"
How many science fiction stories, novels and movies and TV shows have been preaching this very thing since as far back as we can remember?
The idiots who designed the chairs in that theater forgot obey the warnings. Look what happened!
This is where I have the beef, not with self-driving cars and manual transmissions.
It's the fact that there MUST be an "Off Switch!"
HUMANS MUST RULE THE MACHINES! NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 03-23-2018 03:03 PM
quote: Frank Cox
And none of the other makers (18 more other than Uber, apparently) have had any known fatalities either.
What about the Tesla that while in self driving mode, thought a tractor trailer crossing an intersection was an overhead sign, and unsuccessfully tried to drive under it, killing the occupants.
My concern with self driving cars is how do they react is less than ideal driving conditions. A human driver has the potential swerve out of the way of an unexpected obstacle, or know to be careful in icy conditions, and avoid pot holes.
Further, it is still unclear who is libel for damages in an accident. The car's: Occupants? Owner? Manufacturer? Software Programmers? Nobody? Until this is clarified, these vehicles should not be on public roads.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-23-2018 03:27 PM
In the case of the crossing truck, the computer in the car might have displayed some kind of message and given the occupant the chance to confirm the decision, take over driving manually or to stop the car all together but, in the case where quick decisions need to be made, that would not be practical. Would it?
If it was my call, in the case of an accident, it would be the person who okayed the use of the faulted technology unless it can be proven that he could not have predicted the failure. Then it would fall down the pyramid to the next responsible individual. Maybe the engineer who designed it, maybe the programmer who wrote the software... and then, on down the line.
The way it works, today, is "bottom-up" instead of the "top-down" approach that I suggest.
Top-down would make those in charge hold EVERYBODY's feet to the fire because the boss is the one who will feel the pain if one of the underlings screws up.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 03-23-2018 05:28 PM
quote: Randy Stankey
If you want to talk about minutia, yes, we can argue back and forth all day but the real point is that, in ANY automated system, there ***MUST***MUST***MUST*** be a way for a human to take over and shut the system down in case of emergency.
Ok, but that doesn't really answer the question why you would only trust manual transmission cars, because as I indicated, most automatic transmissions do have an "off switch" by simply putting them into neutral.
I'm also convinced that automatic transmission did eventually save lives. Automatic Transmission allows the driver to put his/her full attention to the road and keep both hands firmly on the steering wheel for example. It will be hard to get any objective numbers on that one though.
quote: Randy Stankey
If it was my call, in the case of an accident, it would be the person who okayed the use of the faulted technology unless it can be proven that he could not have predicted the failure. Then it would fall down the pyramid to the next responsible individual. Maybe the engineer who designed it, maybe the programmer who wrote the software... and then, on down the line.
I'm a little bit more with Musk on this, although he will not publicly admit it.
You can't make an omelet without breaking at least one egg. Obviously, you should not unleash potential killer software on humanity, but you can't create perfectly safe "self driving cars" in a lab environment. There are so many permutations out there, you can't possibly recreate them all inside a lab.
So, in order to get us along in the process of real, autonomous self driving vehicles, we have to take some risk. Obviously, the risk needs to be calculated. Still, in the great scheme of things, we know, sometimes stuff will blow up in our face.
Yet, in the end, a world full with self-driving cars will be a better world than today. I'm 30000% convinced in this world, there will be far less people dying from traffic accidents.
So, either we accept a few rough patches to get to this better world scenario or we will simply never get there at all.
Having written essential software for industrial, entertainment and theme park applications myself, I know what kind of responsibility you take onto yourself once you start writing this kind of software. Still, to make any real progress in this field, it should be the big companies above the engineering department who take the primary impact and try to absorb it as much as possible. Why? Because letting a car drive by itself is not just an ordinary piece of software, it's a highly complicated endeavor and we can use all the smart minds we can get on this. So, we should not scare them away with potential live-changing litigation for any single mistake, before they even started.
So, the big (car/automotive) companies investing in this technology should take the blame for anything that goes wrong and they should try to protect their employees from harmful litigation.
As for the reclining seat incident: The problem is that we don't know anything about what happened. For all we know, he triggered the seat himself by accident.
I've got a bunch recliners with a Ciar linear actuator inside of them. Most of those "professional" cinema recliners seem to use actuators from the same Italian manufacturer. They don't have any real fail-safe, the only thing that stops them is either a force bigger than they can handle or the lack of an input signal. Besides the switches themselves and the start- and end-switches, those recliners come with very few safety features.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 03-24-2018 11:32 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Why wouldn't you be able to put your automatic transmission into Neutral when you lose control over the engine?
In a vehicle with a mode selector that is not a physical lever operating switches and relays, this is at least theoretically possible. Visiting relatives in England a couple of years ago, Hertz gave me an "upgrade" to a high end Merc at Heathrow (translation: they foisted it on me because its fuel economy is so sh!tty that no-one else would take it), in which the transmission mode (P/R/N/D) was selected from a touchscreen on the dash. So if a software bug decided that it didn't want to let me shift from D to N, and then the handbrake cable snapped and all the hydraulic fluid leaked out of the master cylinder, the result could have been quite an impressive bang-ding-ow.
The was a lovely piece of polished mahogany on the center console where you would normally find the gear lever, but I'd have preferred the gear lever.
As for dystopian sci-fi about automation, the one I keep wondering if there'll be a movie adaptation of before long is E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops. It was a set book for English literature when I was in high school in the 1980s, when the information and communication technologies it anticipated were only just visible on the horizon.
The main problem with turning it into a movie would be that either you'd have to preserve the 1909 anachronisms and make it a Merchant Ivory-style costume drama, or strip them and update the setting, in which it becomes unremarkable.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-24-2018 12:20 PM
The thing I don't understand about self-driving cars is, why are they trying to design them without a steering wheel? There's bound to be situations where you would NEED to maneuver the car manually...maybe on a road with a weird blockage like a fallen tree branch, or a huge pothole, etc.
Also what about snow-covered roads, gravel roads, roads without stripes, blind corners, and so on? I agree the self-drivers are the future, but taking out all the controls seems kind of stupid.
I'm sure in about 40 years, people will have say to each other, "Can you believe they used to have to DRIVE these cars around manually? How did they get any work done on the way to the office?"
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