aviation safety

Robert Miles introduces the first of several videos on the paper 'Concrete Problems in AI Safety', focusing on how AI systems can cause accidental negative side effects. It explains the problem in accessible terms.

Real air traffic control audio of the Air Astana flight whose flight controls had been wired in reverse by a maintenance error. The pilots struggle to keep control while ATC tries to help.

Chandler Carruth's CppNow 2023 talk describes Carbon as a successor language to C++ rather than a superset, focusing on C++ interop and a path to memory safety in large existing codebases. It explains why Carbon takes a different approach from Cpp2 and Circle.

A short Tesla promotional video touring the company's Crash Lab. It describes using data from the fleet and replicated real-world crash scenarios to engineer vehicle safety.

A one-minute UK road safety advert showing a family car crash in which an unbelted rear passenger kills his mother in a head-on collision. It is a notoriously graphic public information film.

Robert Miles goes through ten common reasons people give for dismissing AI safety, adapted from Stuart Russell's list, and answers each one. It is aimed at skeptics and newcomers.

An Al Jazeera English People & Power investigation from 2010 into safety problems with the Boeing 737NG, featuring whistleblowers on cracking parts, hand-made structural components and an alleged cover-up.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on Boeing, tracing how it went from a quality engineering company to one tied to crashes and 'quality escapes'. It covers the 737 MAX failures and employee concerns about safety.

AVweb's Paul Bertorelli analyzes the safety record of the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS), looking at the 90-plus deployments over 20 years of Cirrus flying. He asks whether the whole-aircraft parachute has actually saved lives.

A short documentary clip of Japanese railway workers and Toyota staff using pointing-and-calling, a safety practice of physically pointing at and naming things while working. It includes examples from several railway companies.

A Last Week Tonight segment on food safety in the US. It looks at the FDA, the USDA and industry groups such as the Association for Dressings and Sauces, and how little enforcement there is.

Robert Miles gives a remastered introduction to AI safety, adapted from a talk in London. It lays out why advanced AI could go wrong and answers common objections.

Robert Miles examines whether the case for AI safety is a Pascal's mugging, a tiny probability of an enormous payoff. He argues it is not, because AI risk does not depend on vanishingly small probabilities.

A short silent video from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission warning consumers to stop using the Peloton Tread+. It shows a child being pulled under the treadmill, and it preceded Peloton's recall.

A Wendover Productions explainer on the political agreements, from the Chicago Convention onward, that determine which airlines can fly where. It lays out the five freedoms of the air.

A woodworker shows how his table saw accident happened, why it happened and how to avoid a similar one. He describes severe hand lacerations from a blade contact.

Toyota's short promo clip showing a Mirai carbon-fiber hydrogen tank shot with a .50 caliber round at point blank range. The bullet pierces the tank, which does not burst, and the gas simply escapes and disperses.

FortNine argues that e-bikes have injury rates and speeds closer to motorcycles than to pedal bikes. It argues riders should treat them with similar safety gear and caution.

Benn Jordan details security vulnerabilities in Flock Safety license-plate-reading cameras and how easily they can be compromised. It includes citations from security researchers and discussion of police surveillance.

AVweb's Paul Bertorelli explains why general aviation has failed to replace leaded avgas, blaming industry inertia, bureaucratic delay and an exemption that removes the incentive. This is part one of two.

Part one of Sandia National Labs' first-person documentary on the use control, detonation safety and survivability of US nuclear weapons. It covers nuclear sharing in NATO and how control of use was separated from possession, leading to the always/never problem.

RustConf 2020 closing keynote by Sian Griffin that dives into Pokemon Blue glitches, notably Missingno and arbitrary-code-execution tricks. It uses them to explain how memory unsafety works and how memory-safe languages like Rust prevent such bugs.

An English-subtitled German workplace safety film about forklift driver Klaus. It is campy and darkly comic, staging an escalating series of forklift accidents.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on freight trains and railroads, covering how profit-driven practices undermine safety. It touches on longer trains and shrinking crews.

An English-subtitled version of Staplerfahrer Klaus, a gory dark-comedy German workplace safety film about the dangers of forklifts in warehouses.

A clip of Milton Friedman answering an audience member about Ford's decision not to recall the Pinto, in which he defends weighing safety costs against benefits. The uploader's framing is strongly hostile to Friedman.

Air traffic audio of a pilot slurring and incoherent while declaring an emergency due to extreme hypoxia, with controllers at Cleveland Center struggling to understand him.

A short Los Alamos National Laboratory safety video on how to use stairs, including handrail advice in a music-video style. It was posted as an example of government spending.

Cockpit camera footage of a jet hitting a bird after takeoff, losing its engine and the crew ejecting. Commenters note it is actually a Canadian CT-155 Hawk despite the F16 title.

Cockpit footage of an approach to the Megeve altiport in France that ends in a gear-up landing, with the warning horn audible throughout. Everyone aboard survived and the crew had thousands of flight hours.

Declassified HUD footage of an F-16 whose unconscious pilot is saved by the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System. It shows the aircraft pulling out of a dive on its own.

An Al Jazeera investigation into Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, featuring current and former engineers who voice safety concerns. It covers quality control problems at the South Carolina plant and the roots of the battery problems that grounded the plane.

A one-minute IIHS demonstration crash test of a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air against a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu, showing how much better the modern car protects its occupants.

FortNine looks at the data on why newer pickup trucks with tall, blunt grilles kill so many pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. It argues that lowering hood height would substantially cut fatalities.

A motorcycle safety video on the SMIDSY (sorry mate, I didn't see you) accident, explaining the perception and optical illusion that makes drivers fail to see riders, and how riders can spot the signs and avoid it.

Nickolas Means tells the story of United Airlines Flight 232, which lost all flight control yet saved more than half its passengers. He draws lessons on teamwork, crew resource management and leadership for software teams.

A Last Week Tonight segment on the US nuclear arsenal and how poorly it is maintained and secured. It covers weapons accidents, outdated launch protocols and security problems.

Not Just Bikes explains why cars rarely crash into buildings in the Netherlands, attributing it to street design that forgives mistakes and to systematic crash investigation. It contrasts this with North American acceptance of such crashes.

Real Engineering analyzes whether electric planes are feasible, focusing on battery energy density limits compared with jet fuel. It concludes electric flight works mainly for short ranges.

Jack Moffitt presents the architecture of Servo, Mozilla's experimental browser engine written in Rust, focusing on parallelism across cores, GPUs and SIMD and the safety properties gained from Rust.