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posted by
martyb
on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:01AM
from the if-it-walks-like-a-duck,-sinks-like-a-duck,-oh,-wait... dept.
from the if-it-walks-like-a-duck,-sinks-like-a-duck,-oh,-wait... dept.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
The duck boat that sank in a Missouri lake last week, killing 17 people, was built based on a design by a self-taught entrepreneur who had no engineering training, according to court records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.
The designer, entrepreneur Robert McDowell, completed only two years of college and had no background, training or certification in mechanics when he came up with the design for "stretch" duck boats more than two decades ago, according to a lawsuit filed over a roadway disaster in Seattle involving a similar duck boat in 2015.
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Duck Boat in Missouri Disaster was Designed by Entrepreneur With no Engineering Training
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Misfortune, n.:
The kind of fortune that never misses.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:19AM (25 children)
Eyeballing the problem and going "my gut feels like this is the solution" is exactly how I feel about Elon Musk and his team at Tesla working on their robot car as well as Uber and to a lesser degree Google. Oh but they are all computer superstars! Maybe Google and actually maybe not inside this domain because no one actually has any experience in this domain Google just has the experience that is closest to it.
The problem is no one knows what the right answer is because that control system is not like any control system that has ever come before it.
In the case I'm talking about there are (likely at least some) real certified engineers with real degrees they really earned. Then they have absolutely no real world practical experience with it because no one to date uses a neural net based control system for anything serious. I'd love to hear corrections to this if any can be demonstrated but I know recent EE graduates and their focus was exactly on NN control systems, which do look absolutely amazing, but they could never get a job applying what they learned because no one trusts their chemical plant to a mathematical process that can prove it does not explode.
In fact a neural network is just a really neat way of building a function approximation based on the input data such that the process itself constantly adjusts the approximation towards what it thinks the correct performance is.
To put this another way: the things driving the robot cars are just approximations of functions that can control a car and not injure people. Another approximation of a function that doesn't injure people is the human brain.
This whole thing sounds exactly to me like a team of people filling the role of this entrepreneur.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:35AM
Sunk? Drowned? At the bottom of Missouri lake? Like a stretched duck?
Designed 20 years ago?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:07AM (9 children)
I'm no fan of Tesla, Google, or Elon Musk or Larry Page and Sergei Brin. That said, my impression is that Google will get this right and Tesla won't simply because of money. Tesla is struggling to be profitable so Musk is rushing products out the door in a hurry. Google has the resources it needs to develop the product carefully and make damn sure nobody that buys it can sue them for making it unsafe.
I'm a Free Software Foundation member, I would genuinely like to see free-as-in-freedom/open source software everywhere for everything. But I don't see how that can work for automated driving unless some incredibly wealthy people or groups back the project. I'm not going to put something with (pardon the capitalization, I'm just copy-pasting) this disclaimer in control of my safety: "THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:32PM (3 children)
Waymo is using a different model than Tesla is. The extra money is important, but Waymo seems to actually be testing things prior to handing them over to consumers. I'm sure by the time that Waymo offers anything for sale to the consumers it won't kill anybody. There will probably be a lot of other things wrong with it like that it'll spy on people as they drive, but I doubt it'll kill anybody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:46PM (2 children)
Yes, Waymo is using a different model and they are testing in depth, for example see this recent press release,
https://www.automotivetestingtechnologyinternational.com/news/vehicle-testing/fca-us-adds-62000-chrysler-pacifica-hybrid-minivans-waymos-self-driving-fleet.html [automotivetestingtechnologyinternational.com]
Yes -- they are adding 62 000 minivans to their test fleet. For comparison, that's double the number of vehicles made in total by Tesla in the first quarter this year.
The old saying that you can't "test in reliability" may still be true, but, if you do enough testing, maybe you can approach a acceptable level of reliability?
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:57PM (1 child)
I'm not looking forward to a future where we can no longer prove a control system is operating correctly. We are going from control systems based on state transition charts and a dynamics model that can be analyzed and proven to have the properties that it is designed for. There can be errors in design that lead to problems but fundamentally you can go back and say "this is exactly what went wrong".
You can't do that with a NN control system. The best you can say is "we made a test case and it no longer faults in that test case." Maybe in the future as network analysis gets better but certainly not right now.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @06:26AM
And after that you'll need robot psychologists to figure out what might have gone wrong...
Seriously though, AI is still at the alchemy stage. They throw stuff into a pot until some recipe works. But they have no real idea on how and why it works.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/ [technologyreview.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/03/googles-ai-turtle-rifle-mit-research-artificial-intelligence [theguardian.com]
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3263755/artificial-intelligence/something-is-still-rotten-in-the-kingdom-of-artificial-intelligence.html [infoworld.com]
I can't find the actual link I have in mind which is about AI's current success showing how it's failing i.e. currently why stuff can "mostly work" is we have huge amounts of samples and we're kinda brute-forcing the solution.
To train a current "AI" that something is a bus we show it huge numbers of photos of buses and huge numbers of other vehicles.
But you don't need to do that when training a dog. A dog can learn what a bus is with far fewer samples. Even a crow with a walnut sized brain can do it with just a few samples.
So current AI tech is actually at quite a dismal and disappointing stage despite some seeming successes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:05PM (4 children)
I think you are right that Google has the best chance out of all 3 of the organizations I mentioned though I'm not sure that Google can actually pull it off because I'm not sure anyone can actually pull it off.
I think this is pretty good analysis but I'll go a step further and bring someone else into this argument I left out originally: GM. Google hasn't been sued even once for killing someone that I know of. GM has been sued for killing people more times than I can count. Out of everyone working on robot cars I think only the current autombile manufacturers really have an intuitive organizational level of understanding of what it means to be sued and how unpleasant that is (lets not kid ourselves that people dying is a problem for them unless it hits the news) - and even when that is true there is still issues with faulty ignition locks and automatic transmission shifters and crap like that.
Google out of the list I originally gave is the only one who hasn't killed someone with their machine. I'm pretty sure GM hasn't either. I personally believe the car manufacturers have the best chance at doing this "right" in terms of safety and working with the driver because of this history of being sued and a very long history of understanding their customer. Google wants to take the steering wheel away (they are very public about this) but GM wants to give drivers something they will like.
Google is also the only one with any understanding of AI. I think this has helped them greatly make up the gap with industry specific knowledge with automobiles. I'm not sure what is going to happen with engineers at GM that have all the car experience but zero NN experience.
The whole robot car thing is fucking insane!
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:19PM (3 children)
> I'm not sure that Google can actually pull it off because I'm not sure anyone can actually pull it off.
Depends on what you mean by "pull it off", but Waymo has been serving public riders for almost half a year now. If you're talking about "can self-drive in a blizzard tornado thunderstorm on a country road", then I agree that I don't think that will be possible (not that humans could do better), but if you're talking about "can be successfully commercialized for a large proportion of use cases", then the horse has already left the barn and won the race.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:36PM (2 children)
I generally think in terms of success as level 5 autonomy though I can see where correctly operating level 4 autonomy (minus the part where those vehicles are currently killing people) can be commercialized.
I don't live in an area that would be served well by level 4 so I don't even think in those terms. I think people who live in cities forget that lots of us live in a place where there won't be the level of data and hinting needed for the level 4 vehicle to operate correctly.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday July 28 2018, @03:18AM (1 child)
I don't think level 5 is well-defined enough for that to be a useful metric. By simple fact of reality, there will always be situations which a self-driving AI is incapable of handling, just like there are situations that human drivers have proven incapable of handling. Even if we assume level 5 is well-defined by an ideal example of a human driver and we assume that we cannot achieve that via AI, it still wouldn't be a good metric because it has already be demonstrated that self driving AI can be made good enough to replace a large number of use cases and providing huge benefits in safety, cost, traffic, and parking. The additional benefit provided from making that last 1% advancement to level 5 is almost certainly not worth the cost. Thus, it seems questionable to me why that metric even exists.
I predict that AI will stay at level 4/4.5 making incremental improvements in the number of situations it can handle until one day everyone just shrugs and agrees that it satisfies this ill-defined level 5 metric. It's not possible to handle all situations; level 5 is just a hand-wavy mark that says "anything a human can handle", with no provisions about the particular human (and human driving skill varies wildly, generally for the worse). Thus, it just boils down to "level 4 but works 99.99...% of the time", which has been demonstrated to be commercially feasible.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday July 28 2018, @03:56AM
Please cite that, who has achieved that? Google?
Very reasonable point and decent example of "pulling it off." I don't really disagree with that but I do disagree vehemently that the steering wheel can be taken away. And Google has gone as far as advocating for laws to do that.
I spent about 10 minutes trying to find a source to cite for that but I can't. It is from my recollection but it is not as outlandish as it sounds. Thrun, the guy who ran the Team that built Stanley, wanted to solve robot cars because his family suffered a death in a car accident. He made no reservations about explaining this in The Great Robot Race from NOVA. After the second Grand Challenge he went to Google to start the car project there and I believe they had entirely identical view points at least at that time. It has been 10 years but I don't think Google changed.
(Score: 3, Funny) by deadstick on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:14PM (7 children)
My go-to reply to such comments: My gut is full of shit. How about yours?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Weasley on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:24PM (5 children)
Bacon, eggs, and a cup of coffee. You should reconsider your dietary choices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:55PM (2 children)
Says the guy bucking for a heart attack...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:07PM (1 child)
Stress has far more to do with whether a heart attack occurs than diet does.
If you were not an imbecile you would know this.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday July 27 2018, @06:02AM
You sound stressed.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:50PM
So what, you just shove them up there?
You do realise that most ingested food stops being identifiable as individual food items before it wends its way very far through your guts, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @03:16AM
My mouth was full of those. But once in my gut what comes back is vomit. I will put that a lot closer to shit than what went tastily down the hatch.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:50PM
I like that a lot!
(Score: 3, Funny) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:16PM
I'm all for safety but if there's not at least a .01% chance of a devastating newspaper-headline-worthy disaster, I agree it isn't worth doing!
:)
(I'm horrible I'm sorry!)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:39PM (4 children)
I'm a real EE graduate with decades of experience in safety critical control systems, emphasis in optimal control (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_control [wikipedia.org]). I played around with NN (and fuzzy logic) a little before and after graduation, but was told by fellow engineers and mentors that they'd never by permitted or licensed because of non-determinism and no formal proofs. And even then, why would you want to when you can design systems differently and mathematically prove there is nothing better in terms of efficiency, correctness or any other metric you care to use? Then there was an article in I think Sectrum showing that fuzzy logic was simply a restatement of classical control afterwhich it kinda dissapeared, at least from the hype wagon.
I've worked with some of the smartest software people out there, but often they miss little details like Coriolis force, limited control power or energy, energy ellipsoids. From what I've read about autonomous cars (a few papers on Stanley), nobody is, or at least was, using NN
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:46PM (1 child)
Ranting on NN without even recognizing what it's good for. It's a fuzzy matching system so it's far far superior to a deterministic expert logic system when dealing with fuzzy problems. It does approximate pattern recognition. This widget coming off the product line is 15% different than the reference picture, kick it out for a human to examine. See a face in a high security zone that isn't on the clearance list, notify security. NN does basically what a human does. Humans are allowed to do stuff in warehouses, factories, refineries, and so on. But you wouldn't use a human as your control system. They'd take a short break and something would catch fire.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Friday July 27 2018, @02:52AM
I think the way to state this is that the neural network can solve problems that are not solvable well or at all with classic control theory. This is specifically because the NN is always an approximation of a function that achieves the goal and can be represented in a smaller space (less code, less memory, less everything) than a function that can be proven to work correctly or optimally. That has a lot of utility and I recognize that.
What I don't recognize is the cost vs benefit of using a NN in a space like the robot cars. I do recognize that the problem is most likely so complex that normal control theory can't handle it. Restating it simply: NN or other AI is the only way that robot cars can ever work.
That's frighting and I can't see how the NN control system is fit for this purpose in any way.
I think at the very least that the robot car control system is trying to solve a problem so complex that it will always be marginal. I have this theory that there are problems that get to a sufficient level of complexity such that no (practical?) system can solve them. Our brains are such a system - we need a ton of heuristics or we couldn't make it through a day. The robot needs a ton of heuristics or it can't move.
We already have highly heuristic AI control systems in cars: humans. It would not surprise me at all if the robot car winds up never safer than or no more safe than a human.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:02PM
Thank you for joining the conversation!
I'm familiar with Stanley and the whole DARPA grand challenge because this has been very interesting to me since the original grand challenge announcement. Stanley was an amazing machine and Sebastion went off to Google to start their project (and then left but I don't know why, also Sebastion is actively hostile to steering wheels because of a family death in a car). The Stanley technique of color recognition fusion with the local sensor data was really clever and all kinds of good especially in that there were minimal moving parts or at least no gimbals.
Tesla is NN: https://electrek.co/2018/06/11/tesla-ai-director-insights-autopilot-computer-vision-neural-net/ [electrek.co]
Waymo was and I think still is NN: https://opendatascience.com/the-history-of-neural-networks-and-ai-part-iii/ [opendatascience.com]
I cant find a better reference but this suggests and I believe that GM is also NN: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gm-apos-self-driving-car-133500602.html [yahoo.com]
I can't find any reference at all for Uber but I think it is NN too.
It's fucking crazy isn't it? And people act like this is the same thing as an airplane autopilot and base how well this is going to go on provable models. Shesh.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:11PM
Oh I forgot to mention the real allure for an NN based control system or at least what I noticed and thought was absolutely remarkable as a lay person trying to understand them.
The process for creating a control system with NN is to setup the model with inputs from the controlled process during the learning phase. Examples of normal operating behavior are fed into the system and the NN begins training and refinement to get to it's approximation of producing a system that doesn't dump chemicals on the floor.
After you feed it enough training data you can then rearrange the neural network using a formally defined process and now the trained network can receive inputs from the controlled system and produce outputs to control it. Run that in a simulation to find out when it let the pressure in a pipe get to 85k PSI, it blew up and killed someone then go back into training mode and teach it that is bad, bad network, bad.
The allure seems to be that you can do this with the known transformation of the NN from learning mode to control mode so that you don't have to actually produce dynamics models and all that. That sounds like a much easier task to me than building a formal or optimal control system.
I also think it's rather insane for anything with higher stakes than a video game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:31AM (2 children)
Or blame the fact that the devices [wikipedia.org] are not too safe.
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:36PM
Most of the "fatal incidents" are car accidents.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:04PM
Given the number of duck boats in operation daily, a few anecdotes from Wikipedia doesn't say much either way about their safety..
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:41AM (3 children)
You don't, or shouldn't, get an attest for a design and approval to use the product fabricated on it based solely on authority of the designer. So the fact that designer was not a formally trained naval engineer is immaterial here.
The news say that there was a sudden storm and the vessel capsized. Picture shows it has a very wide base, so it shouldn't be easy to flip over. But it did, and perhaps the boat was performing at least not worse than any other similarly sized boat in same weather.
History of similar accidents usually shows the culprit was cramming too many passengers and overloading boats, which usually draw no bad consequences on sightseeing tours ... unless a sudden storm raises high waves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:24PM (1 child)
I'm not a boat designer, and I'd love it if someone here on SN is and would comment.
One point: that the duck boats are fairly flat bottomed most definitely does not make them more stable. It may intuitively seem that way on fairly flat calm water, but wave energy is very vertical- up and down motion / energy, and unpredictably uneven. A more "V" shape deflects the wave energy / momentum, rather than pushing up on one side or the other, rocking the boat.
Duck boats are fairly narrow too. A very square shape with the same surface area would be less prone to capsize.
Most boat loads are above the waterline, and adding load pretty much always raises the center of gravity, increasing the likelihood of capsize. Add these things up and you have a disaster waiting to happen.
I don't know who approves boat designs but I blame whoever / whatever does.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:07PM
Having seen said boats in person. The water goes up above the wheel well. They are meant to go slow and in shallow water.
They have been operating for well over 30 years. Sounds like they exceeded the design. Probably overconfidence.
However, in Branson there is a lot of homegrown sorts of things like that. It is a tourist trap. Avoid them. Frankly I am surprised there was not a larger accident earlier and the fact it made national news at all.
That town is the only place I have seen a Ferrari parked in front of a single wide trailer.
(Score: 1) by fortyseven on Friday July 27 2018, @12:53PM
Of course they are passing the blame. US Weather service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for the area for the time period that the duck boat went in the water - that is the reason that the captain (or the tour operator) decided to do the water part of the tour first instead of the land tour first as they usually do. Severe thunderstorm warnings within a half hour of taking a flat water boat into the water spells disaster. Remember - this is the US midwest - tornado country.
Place the blame squarely on the tour operator (who just purchased the company 6 months ago) and the captain for the foolish decision that ended up killing people who trusted them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:43AM
Stretch Duck-boat? Just like a "stretch limo" or a "stretch swamp buggy", no? Except that the marine environment is far less forgiving of stupid mistakes. So we have stuff like this: https://failblog.cheezburger.com/thereifixedit [cheezburger.com] and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0T7R2JgukM [youtube.com] One of these things is not like the other!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:26AM (8 children)
Is a duck boat like a working-class version of the swan boats you used to get in the Tunnel of Love?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:52AM (1 child)
DUKW [wikipedia.org] is an name for an amphibious vehicle.
DUCK is not a good name, as they tend [thisisinsider.com] to sink [wikipedia.org], unlike real ducks, that don't always sink when shot.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:48PM
That's because they're made out of wood.
(Score: 5, Informative) by deadstick on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:05PM (2 children)
Originally, they were WW2 DUKW's, hence the name. It's basically a 6x6 Army truck with a boat hull around it, so it can be driven down a beach and into the water. The duck tours operated for years with war-surplus DUKW's, but those eventually wore out and new ones were built to a cheapened design that has not been through a military-grade procurement process.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)
Military standards are kind of hit or miss. On the one hand they tend to be great against things like small arms fire compared with civilian models, on the other hand though since the federal government is immune to lawsuits from military casualties in most cases, they tend to tolerate a higher risk of death than you would tolerate in something that's designed for civilian use.
There's a right and a wrong way to adapt military gear for civilian use and this isn't the right way. Doing it like Hummer did was more or less right. You engineer something from scratch that has similar handling capabilities as the original and make sure to test that it's actually safe. But, sometimes, the design is just not safe for civilian use. And this is probably one of those times. Between them being so high off the ground and them being a design that's not particularly stable, it's more or less inevitable that problems will occur.
When I road on one of these decades ago, it was one of those original surplus vehicles and I don't recall having ridden through crowded areas on it.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Friday July 27 2018, @01:32AM
We rode the ones at Wisconsin Dells years ago, when they had the original surplus equipment. The business was in a commercial district, and we drove through normal traffic to the water -- not exactly "crowded areas", but mixing with ordinary vehicle traffic.
(Score: 2) by leftover on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:17PM (2 children)
(Ex "Gator Navy" here) As others have said, it is now the common nickname for a hybrid truck/boat. Due to the very different requirements for the two, it typically does neither one well. Even the more specifically purpose designed amphibious landing craft have performance limitations because the transition from deep water to shallow surf to land is difficult. The Marines have an amphibious armored vehicle. Every time we launched a batch of them, all eyes were on counting the number that resurfaced. Even the most boat-like landing craft had flat bottoms and very shallow draft. Navy crew and the Marines themselves had very specific loading plans designed to keep the center of gravity as low as possible. Each plan had its own sea and surf condition limits. A bunch of tourists hanging out high on the sides have no such analysis and discipline.
Short answer: Military landing craft should not be used for tour boats any more than an M1A1 Main Battle Tank would serve to deliver groceries.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday July 26 2018, @05:48PM (1 child)
> an M1A1 Main Battle Tank would serve to deliver groceries.
People like you are why I am disappointed every single time I go grocery shopping, or commute on 4 wheels, or go to the airport, or anywhere on the highway for that matter.
When I see how many assholes operate wannabe-tanks worse than my neighbor's kid operates her Barbie Jeep, I really wish my grocery run had more crunching power.
(Score: 2) by leftover on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:30PM
I know what you mean. Every variant of asshole driver is out there. Recently had a ride in a tow truck, talking to the driver about his experiences. Big F-ing Truck, flashing lights, towed vehicle and people routinely cut him off so they can be 16 feet ahead. Supernaturally calm guy, he said he can't even count the number of times he has gone to the next exit for a turnaround when people block him from the exit he signaled for.
A couple of decades ago I actually looked into putting ferociously defensive external features on my commuter vehicle. It turns out there are actually laws against this on the books, indicating that someone beat me to it. Crap.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:48AM (19 children)
If vessels based on his designs have been in use for 20 years, then trying to pass the blame on to the duck-boat designer is ridiculous. This accident is a horrible tragedy, but find your scapegoat somewhere else.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:34AM (8 children)
Agreed, the boat operators had plenty of history and knowledge of the vessel and its characteristics.
I've taken tourist rides in converted freight train cars with seats made of 2x10 lumber, I'm sure there was a certain lack of pedigree in the designer's background, but the tour operator wasn't barreling us down 30 degree inclines at 70 miles per hour - they were operating their vehicle in a safe manner for its design, condition and environment. I'd expect engineering degrees from someone designing a 70mph roller coaster, but not a tour train that tops out at 20mph, and usually operates closer to 7mph.
The rough waters of the lake during that storm would have been a problem to any tour boat, if the tour boat was designed like a North Atlantic life-pod for a cruise ship - nobody would take the tour. It's first up to the captain, and second up to the tour company who hires the captain, to operate their vessels in a safe manner.
I am a little surprised that so many people failed to put on personal floatation and ride the storm out on their vests - that, and getting caught by the weather, would seem to fall on the captain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Weasley on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:45PM (4 children)
What good does a personal flotation device do if you're trapped in the boat? At least I assume that must be the case. Could there have been that many people on the boat that can't swim?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:29PM (1 child)
From what I've seen, many (most? all?) of the victims fall into a particular demographic of people who aren't good at swimming.
Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Fatal Unintentional Drowning Among Persons Aged ≤29 Years — United States, 1999–2010 [cdc.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:27PM
I thought their afros would help them float?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:15PM
It's one thing to swim in calm water, but quite another to do so during a storm. Yes, if you were trapped under the boat you'd be screwed, but if you weren't a life jacket would help even a good swimmer. You really want all the help you can get.
Admittedly, most of my experience is on the great lakes and not smaller ones... but a good captain is supposed to ensure that everyone on board gets their life jackets ready at the first sign of bad weather. I don't mean when the waves start to get bad, I mean when you first notice a storm on a horizon or hear about it over the radio. The winds and chop show up before the actual storm does, and if you aren't ready you might not have the chance to get ready depending on the strength of the storm.
Saying "nah, we don't need it" is how you end up with these people in the water and all the life jackets in the boat. Not a good situation, and they probably wouldn't have made it worse had they been worn.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:32PM
There's a video online of the whole ordeal - I haven't seen it, but from what I've heard it took quite a while between when it was obvious there was a serious problem and when the boat started going down.
Even if you can't swim, a PFD will float you face up. A great captain wouldn't have been caught out by the storm. An adequate captain would have recognized he was screwed and gotten everyone into their PFDs before it started getting bad.
Now, if people don't heed the call to abandon ship, there's not much a captain can do, but when it started looking bad enough to go down, I'd have gotten out a rope and told the strongest swimmers to take the end and swim away from the boat, and had the floaters jump in after them. But, not every disaster story goes well, and just because you've been a captain for 16 years doesn't mean you're not capable of panic.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:40PM
Actually, the first question to ask is: Why was the boat on the water during the storm?
Where I live, all the boats are required to leave the lake in case of storm warning. And in modern times, it's not exactly that storms catch you by surprise. There's always a sufficient warning period to get off the lake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:05PM (1 child)
> I'd expect engineering degrees from someone designing a 70mph roller coaster
And you might be disappointed. I've read a personally published memoir by a leading roller coaster designer (published by photocopy) who designed a number of large rides for Disney, Six Flags, etc. Don't think he has any degrees at all. It includes his engineering calculations which stop at simple particle physics (like calculating accelerations for turns of different radii and speed). Nothing but the most basic of stress calculations, no fatigue calculations or experiments. If these rides were reliable it's because they were wildly overbuilt (not a bad thing, but not what I expected to be reading).
This guy's career was in the 60s-80s, things may have changed in the amusement ride business since then?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 27 2018, @12:25AM
Well, when I say degrees, I'd rather have actual practical knowledge than degrees any day. I know far too many engineers who essentially purchased their degrees and can't explain much less perform an integral to save their lives.
I knew an engineer with zero college who did metalwork design, knew his cad inside and out, could calculate a load with the best of 'em. That was in the '90s, I think the may have been the last of his kind - so many degreed engineers out of work who can get the job first, especially in big corporations which demand such things.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:11PM (2 children)
We drove unsafe auto designs for a helluva lot longer than that. As for personal flotation devices: those would have worked splendidly in the original WW2 DUKW's. But put an enclosure over the boat, and you have a deathtrap for anyone who hasn't been trained to use them effectively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:48PM (1 child)
We did, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that the engineering necessary to make them safer hadn't been developed yet. The biggest things have been highly advanced technology like ABS and ESC which greatly reduce the likelihood of a vehicle tipping over or going out of the intended path of travel while braking.
A lot of those deaths are also unrelated to the technology, for much of that time it wasn't illegal to drink and drive and there wasn't much of an effort to inform people about how dangerous it was until sometime in the '80s. Also, it wasn't until sometime in the '80s that it become legally required to wear a seat belt.
Also, unlike the ducks there just wasn't a particularly viable alternative for longer trips back then and even in town, having horses has it's own set of logistical issues.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Friday July 27 2018, @01:42AM
The best thing one can say about 50's cars is that horses are positively lethal in comparison. I doubt there's any more dangerous "vehicle" that's ever been used for routine personal transportation.
One of my mom's childhood memories was of a man lying dead with a horseshoe print on his face...
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:53PM (3 children)
Both Wikipedia and the LA times article say they are military surplus. So why are they crediting some random guy as the "designer." Did this person design the logo? Or come-up with the idea of them being tour boats?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:54PM (1 child)
Read more carefully - these were modified "stretch" duck boats whose hull had been lengthened to carry more passengers, as well as having a canopy added to trap passengers inside if it capsized.
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:21PM
Yes, you are right. It is quite clear from the article that these are different boats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:31PM
I'm assuming this line in the summary is why:
he came up with the design for "stretch" duck boats
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:25PM (1 child)
People can easily do horribly unsafe things and use horribly unsafe machinery for long periods of time without injury or death... until an injury or death occurs.
Some questions [calpoly.edu] that we might ask about equipment to which we will briefly entrust our lives (adapted from the linked article):
I would submit that the question "How many 20-year periods have happened where we got away without consequences" is similar to the "What's the failure rate" question, and as I understand it, the 20-year safety record isn't great, as demonstrated by the previous incidents [people.com] with the equipment:
Further, the six questions above are adapted from an article on a piece of equipment with a much better safety record than the Duck Boats in question--only three deaths and three injuries, ever--that's now literally a textbook example of how poor design and relying on the attitude underlying your post leads to dead people who needn't have died: The THERAC-25. The linked article about it, above, is fittingly entitled "Death and Denial." The article was written in 2001 about events from the mid to late 80's. The point you are trying to make is late to the party.
In short, you are entitled to your opinion, and I appreciate your sharing it, but I disagree, and offer the foregoing in support of my position.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:37PM
The duck boats are much safer that Therac-25 based on the number of "riders" vs. number of deaths or serious injuries. It's even worse for the Therac if you compare serious injuries or deaths while in normal operation. Duck boats don't normally operate in storms with 80 MPH winds.
That's not to say there can't be improvements, there can always be improvements.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:17PM
Especially given:
This strikes me as a lawyer playing pin the suit on the donkey.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:05PM (1 child)
I've been on duck boat tours in Boston on the Charles River. They have canopies as well and would trap passengers if they capsized. Nobody wore lifejackets, though flotation devices were present on the boat. When fully loaded there was not a lot of distance between the water and the lip of the boat; it would not have taken much to swamp it.
Capsizing? I don't know the specific calculations but if a strong enough wave struck a craft whose center of gravity was too high and which tilted past the critical angle, it would do so. How would that have been different for a regular length duck boat? As i understand it, that is why keels are useful, but as an amphibious craft of course it would not have one of those.
The thrust of the article therefore smacks of credentialism, whereby people despise anyone who does anything they haven't gotten a 4 (preferably PhD) year degree to do, and which hasn't been given a stamp of approval by at least 3 different govt. Agencies. Because, meh, we had to rack up heavy student loan debt to write mealy mouthed articles panning others, so how dare anyone do otherwise?
It's the same credentialism that rears its head when a good samaritan happens upon somebody bleeding to death on the side of the road, who then binds his wounds, and then winds up getting sued by the victim's family because he used a shirt instead of factory-wrapped sterile gauze, and panned in the press for not having "professional training."
The simpering naysayers and ninnies and pantywastes who engage in this stuff are a pox on humanity. Life is risk. Strap on skis, and there's a chance you could die. Eat at a restaurant, and there's a chance you could choke on your meal and die. Sit in your easy chair too long and there's a chance you could die of a blood clot.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:35PM
aka lawyers.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:15PM (3 children)
I've been waiting for something questioning these things. I'd never even heard of duck boats until this disaster. As soon as I saw one on the news my immediate thought was that it's designed like a huge jon boat.
Anyone who's ever been in a jon boat (flat bottom and square front) knows that you can pretty near get swamped by nothing more than a motor boat wake. Those things are suicide on a large body of water where waves can get big and are best suited for ponds. On the other hand, a deep V hull boat is generally way more stable / seaworthy.
These insane things look like a huge jon boat with a huge top-heavy canopy, filled with people. Holy crap...what could go wrong? NO possible way should they have EVER been allowed on a body of water that size. Insane!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:23PM (2 children)
Yet the Coast Guard certified the very boat that sunk as fit for route and service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:29PM (1 child)
Barack Obama's Coast Guard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @12:16AM
They are basically revisions of the DUKK(sp?) from WW2, modernized and under continuing manufacture since larger car companies gave up on them.
Very obviously there are dangers to their design. Having a canopy on them is insanely stupid, but a series of rollbars, even in the event of a capsize, should allow passenger to escape with a minimum of harm if not tethered to the vehicle.
As far as the certification goes: vehicles like these have been certified since WW2. There is nothing special about them. Certain modifications should obviously be forbidden for safety reasons, but otherwise they are a useful vehicle both in tourism and utility operations and should not be banned as a result of this.