Joe Nocera wildly overstates the case in stating that Boeing "murdered" the passengers on those two flights. Yes, they were negligent. But American and Western European pilots who have encountered that same malfunction reacted in accordance with their training and understanding of the aircraft's systems, disabled the runaway trim, and la…
Joe Nocera wildly overstates the case in stating that Boeing "murdered" the passengers on those two flights. Yes, they were negligent. But American and Western European pilots who have encountered that same malfunction reacted in accordance with their training and understanding of the aircraft's systems, disabled the runaway trim, and landed safely at their destinations. Test pilots reproducing the conditions that led to those crashes were likewise easily able to handle the malfunction. In one of those crashes, the same malfunction had occurred on that airplane's previous flight, and the pilot had dealt with it safely, but inexplicably failed to report it to maintenance. So no, Joe (what's with people named Joe this week?), it wasn't murder.
I'm no lawyer, but that's never stopped me: negligence doesn't add up to the intent for murder. You have to have reckless intent; they realised the possibility, but did not intend it.
Yeah, negligence is a long way from intent to kill. Nobody from Boeing said, "Hey, let's design the 737 MAX so it will kill a bunch of people!" You have to be really careful about prosecuting this sort of thing. As long as accidents are treated as accidents, people who were involved in the process will (usually) tell you want happened and what needs to be done to improve it. Once you start throwing around criminal charges, people who could fix the problem will instead shut up and lawyer up. Countries that criminalize accidents generally have poor safety records, for this reason.
No liability accident reporting is the same policy we have in healthcare. As a nurse, we’re asked to report medication errors to help prevent future errors. The problem is there’s been a perfect algorithm in place for decades to prevent errors. We bypass that algorithm for our convenience (laziness) and make errors. We don’t report it because we know it was 100% our fault.
Joe Nocera wildly overstates the case in stating that Boeing "murdered" the passengers on those two flights. Yes, they were negligent. But American and Western European pilots who have encountered that same malfunction reacted in accordance with their training and understanding of the aircraft's systems, disabled the runaway trim, and landed safely at their destinations. Test pilots reproducing the conditions that led to those crashes were likewise easily able to handle the malfunction. In one of those crashes, the same malfunction had occurred on that airplane's previous flight, and the pilot had dealt with it safely, but inexplicably failed to report it to maintenance. So no, Joe (what's with people named Joe this week?), it wasn't murder.
I'm no lawyer, but that's never stopped me: negligence doesn't add up to the intent for murder. You have to have reckless intent; they realised the possibility, but did not intend it.
Yeah, negligence is a long way from intent to kill. Nobody from Boeing said, "Hey, let's design the 737 MAX so it will kill a bunch of people!" You have to be really careful about prosecuting this sort of thing. As long as accidents are treated as accidents, people who were involved in the process will (usually) tell you want happened and what needs to be done to improve it. Once you start throwing around criminal charges, people who could fix the problem will instead shut up and lawyer up. Countries that criminalize accidents generally have poor safety records, for this reason.
No liability accident reporting is the same policy we have in healthcare. As a nurse, we’re asked to report medication errors to help prevent future errors. The problem is there’s been a perfect algorithm in place for decades to prevent errors. We bypass that algorithm for our convenience (laziness) and make errors. We don’t report it because we know it was 100% our fault.