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Comment by russdill | Hacker News Reader

There is no possible way to confuse these two actions. There's a reason a wheel is attached to the gear lever.

> There is no possible way to confuse these two actions.

This is obviously an overstatement. Any two regularly performed actions can be confused. Sometimes (when tired or distracted) I've walked into my bathroom intending to shave, but mistakenly brushed my teeth and left. My toothbrush and razor are not similar in function or placement.

If someone confused their steering wheel for the brake you'd probably be surprised - there are indeed errors that are essentially impossible for a competent person to make by mistake. No idea about the plane controls, though.

Even in modern "fly by wire" cars the steering wheel and brake pedal have an immediate effect. They are essentially directly connect to their respective control mechanisms. As far as I understand both of the plane controls on question just trigger sequences that are carried out automatically. So it's more like firing off the wrong backup script than scratching the wrong armpit.

The only two production cars on sale where the steering wheel is mechanically decoupled from the wheels are the cybertruck and a variant of the Lexus RX.

Essentially impossible is not the same as impossible. We already know that an improbably sequence of events took place because a plane crashed which is highly unusual.

Even humans have fixed action patterns. Much behavior is barely under conscious control.

If I were to apply OPs assertion to your actions it’s like brushing your teeth with razor. I guess that’s what they meant.

Not really, though. They're both (retracting the gear, and cutting off fuel) just toggle switches, as far as your brain's conscious mechanisms go. Doing them both on every flight dulls the part of your brain that cares about how they feel different to perform.

(I'm not strongly arguing against the murder scenario, just against the idea that it's impossible for it to be the confusion scenario.)

Neither is a toggle switch and the gear lever is incredibly conspicuous:

https://www.aerosimsolutions.com.au/custom-products/olympus-...

This would be like opening your car door when you meant to activate the turn signal.

I meant philosophical toggle switches, not physical ones. The gear can go between down and up. The fuel can go between run and cutoff. Given enough practice, the brain takes care of the physical actions that manipulate those philosophical toggles without conscious thought about performing them.

That's just your brain associating the bathroom with the act of brushing your teeth, and therefore doing it automatically upon the trigger of entering the bathroom. It bears no resemblance to the accidental activation of a completely different button.

The other poster's correction: "it’s like brushing your teeth with razor" is apt. Touching the fuel cutoff switches is not part of any procedure remotely relevant to the takeoff, so there's no trigger present that would prompt the automatic behavior.

Now I'm trying to remember if I've ever picked up my razor and accidentally begun tooth brushing motions with it. Probably!

More relevantly, you seem to me to be unduly confident about what this pilot's associative triggers might and might not be.

Good analogy. Things I do every day in front of the mirror, but I occasionally attempt to squeeze some soap on my toothbrush. Or I have to brush my teeth and I find my beard foamed up. Or I walk out of the shower after only rinsing myself with water.

I've definitely put shaving cream on my toothbrush before.

Not a bathroom one, but the number of times I've tried to pay for public transport with my work/office fob is mental. Generally happens on days where I'm feeling sharper than average but also consumed with problem solving

I agree. Has anyone here unplugged their mouse instead of pressing caps lock by mistake?

Do you unplug your mouse so frequently that it has become muscle memory?

It depends on how that person internalized and learned the behaviour. We store things differently.

this bathroom thing and various similar scenarios happens to me when im on weed.

Genuinely curious - could heavy marijuana use cause confusion between landing gear and fuel cutoff? Or some other drugs? (Wondering if they screen pilots for alcohol before they board an aircraft.)

They don't screen every time but there are spot checks. A pilot with heavy use will certainly get caught

The prelim report states these pilots were indeed breathalyzed before takeoff.

Technically an overstatement but not by much. Correctly restated, its highly unlikely these actions were confusing pilots. It's as if you mistook flushing your toilet twice when instead you wanted to turn on the lights in your bathroom.

I don't agree with the "twice". A frequently performed manipulation like the fuel cutoff (usually performed after landing) collapses down to a single intention that is carried out by muscle memory, not two consciously selected actions.

Your opinion is valid but definitely doesn't align with any evidence.

What a shallow, copy-paste response.

His statement was about a certain, obviously real tendency in general, existence of which is reasonable to assume there is enough research about.

He objected not to the unlikelihood of an accidental manipulation, but to the potential flaw in your comparison (which was at best a valid opinion).

Can you elaborate on why you think I copied and pasted my response? There is no evidence of it existing anywhere other than my cerebrum:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Your+opinion+is+valid+but...

I think you're misarticulating my argument.

Well if we are going by "unlikely" equals "didn't happen" then we can conclude that the plane didn't crash.

The other day I was eating dinner while chatting with my partner. I finished eating and needed to pee and throw away the fast food container. I walked straight to the bathroom, raised the toilet lid and threw the fast food container right into the toilet.

Weird mistakes can happen.

My partner got a good laugh out of it

Yep, I’ve taken clean dishes from the dishwasher and put them “away” in the refrigerator.

As I get older, I do some similar stuff, way more than past, even it is just once per month. And I guess way more when sugar is high than not. Don't know your age or medical profile and I am not a doctor, just keep an eye.

Sometimes people put cleaning liquid in the fridge.

Given a long enough span of time, every possible fuck up eventually will happen.

Probably time to design a plane that can't be sent into terrain in seconds by flipping a switch.

"Sent into terrain in seconds by flipping a switch" is both too inaccurate and feels too cursory to take as impetus for serious design criticism, especially when the extensive preliminary report explicitly does not recommend any design changes with the current information.

Hilarious how Hacker News routinely bashes software managers who don’t understand a problem space and give vague and impossible goals. But somehow “just don’t let an aircraft fly itself into the ground” is a reasonable statement.

Is this Hacker News person in the room with us right now?

Are we in a room together?

If we are going to pretend that Hacker News is a single person who should have consistent opinions on different topics then we might as well pretend that we are in a room together.

You might as well refuse to place CNN and Fox News on the political spectrum with the same argument.

HN has somewhat democratic editorial tools and thus majority opinions on HN are very clear.

Now try to design a plane that also lets you rapidly shutoff fuel to both engines in case of fire.

How about actual switch covers (and switches that are not located right in the same area as stuff you are using routinely) instead of a glorified detent? Though I suspect this would also succumb to muscle memory

What about up on the overhead panel where the other engine start controls are?

Or (at the cost of complexity) you could interlock with the throttle lever so that you can't flip the cutoff if the lever isn't at idle

Also the fire suppression system is a different activation (covered pull handles I think)

> How about actual switch covers (and switches that are not located right in the same area as stuff you are using routinely) instead of a glorified detent? Though I suspect this would also succumb to muscle memory

The switches are already pretty distinct - but that only reduces failures, it can never eliminate them entirely.

> Or (at the cost of complexity) you could interlock with the throttle lever so that you can't flip the cutoff if the lever isn't at idle

More complexity also means more failure modes. You don't want it to be impossible to shut down the engines due to a broken throttle sensor.

And a gun that doesn't let you point it at your face. And a knife that doesn't let you cut yourself. And a car that doesn't let you accelerate into a static object. And...

Hey my car won’t let me accelerate into a static object. It’s so good it will even slam on the brakes when driving 5mph in a parking garage because it thinks parked cars are oncoming traffic.

Because there's no difference in actions needed to do so. A similar mistake is throwing away a useful item while holding onto a piece of trash. The action is the same, it's just the item in question that's different.

This is not what happened here at all. The actions needed to activate the fuel cutoff switches are not similar to any other action a pilot would want to make during takeoff.

The form of the action isn’t necessarily what’s stored. They may have memorized something as “fourth action” or some other mnemonic mechanism

I want you to guess how many traffic accidents are caused by accidentally reversing when you intended to go forward.

Test your mental model against the real world. This is your opportunity.

Those are caused by operating the same lever in a slightly different manner. Not comparable to two completely differently designed levers placed far apart.

Same goes for accidental acceleration instead of braking. Two of the same kind of lever right next to each other.

Accidental acceleration while intending to turn on the wipers would be a fitting example, I don't think that happens though.

You’re just overlaying your mental model.

Think of the action as a stored function. Maybe they’ve always recalled the function as part of a certain list. It can be a case where the lists get confused rather than the modality of input (lever etc)

Then that would be pilot error, and an aggravating error.

Driving isn't trained to anywhere near the same standard.

Probably more training required to bake a cake than drive a car (hours wise).

If we had your typical driver fly a plane we'd be doomed to a lot of crashes.

I have baked cakes without ever been trained for it.

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