More than 100 die in Havana air crash.

More than 100 people have died after a Boeing 737 airliner crashed and exploded near Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, Cuban state media says.

Three people have survived but are in a critical condition in hospital, Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma reported.

The plane came down shortly after take-off, crashing in a field.

It was carrying 104 passengers and nine foreign crew, according to local media.

"There has been an unfortunate aviation accident. The news is not very promising, it seems that there is a high number of victims," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was quoted as saying.

:-(

The text description of the damage to the bus is quite poor - it looks a if the body has bee ripped off the chassis...

More info and pictures at WaPo - New Jersey school bus crash that killed student, teacher under investigation, officials say

The aerial shot shows it best.
Looks like the rear of the bus was hit from the side, and it knocked the chassis out from under the body. In the shot of the rear of the body (with the open roof door) you can see the crush damage on the left hand side of the body from the impact.
It looks like the bus might have been using the Emergency vehicle only connector between the carriageways & the rear of the bus was sitting out in the middle of the left hand lane.

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Grant
Darwin NT

More than 100 die in Havana air crash.

The 737 is the number 1 commercial airliner. Given the recent incidents with engine issues, I can see a lot of safety bodies will be interested in the result of this investigation. Human error, or another engine problem? If it's an engine problem, it could also impact A320s as many of them also use the CFM56.
July 2016 the 30,000th CFM56 engine was produced. There have been issues with the earlier series which have been addressed.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Expensive idiots? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-44197993

Stupidity, part II

On the left, somebody's back garden, where he and his mates have been digging out a nice big barbecue patio. So big, he's dug several feet into the bank of ...

... on the right, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, where by my reckoning about a quarter of a million tons of muddy water are just waiting to knock on his back door and say 'can we come through, please, and out the front on our way to the river?' - which is 100 feet below, and on the other side of several more rows of houses, two main roads, a railway, and an industrial estate.

To paraphrase the X-files...

"Stupidity is out there"

...unfortunately, one doesn't have to travel far to see it.

Such an event would be "Filthy shades of Middlewich"

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

An idiot's eye view.

Michael John Mills was sentenced to at least six months' jail in Penrith Local Court on Tuesday, after pleading guilty to two charges relating to the incident, which occurred at Kingswood on February 17.
In dashcam footage taken from his own car, Mills can be seen driving his car along the Great Western Highway as loud music plays in the background.
He crosses from the left lane to the middle lane, and then attempts to move to the right lane, clipping the rear of a white Toyota Camry along the way and ending up on the median strip.
He then continues along the Great Western Highway until he veers left into the red fence of a home, before ploughing into the house itself.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Truck narrowly misses clerk after smashing into Flower Mound liquor store

FLOWER MOUND, Texas - The driver of a pickup truck was hurt after crashing into a liquor store in Flower Mound.

...Employees said the driver of the truck appeared to lose control. He crossed a median, went through a row of buses, hit two parked vehicles and then went into the building.

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Driver arrested after crashing into gas station, killing Dallas man

A young father who stopped at a Dallas gas station convenience store was just leaving the store when a pickup truck veered off the road and hit and killed him.

(He was) on a skateboard when the pickup truck hit him, then smashed deep into the Valero gas station on Marsalis Avenue near Interstate 35E in Oak Cliff late Monday afternoon.

Witnesses said the pickup truck driver was driving erratically before missing the exit and suddenly jumping the curb.

...The driver was arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter. He will be tested for drug or alcohol intoxication. His name has not been released.

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https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/05/emergency-brakes-were-disabled-by-ubers-self-driving-software-ntsb-says/

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its preliminary report on the fatal March crash of an Uber self-driving car in Tempe, Arizona. It paints a damning picture of Uber's self-driving technology.

The report confirms that the sensors on the vehicle worked as expected, spotting pedestrian Elaine Herzberg about six seconds prior to impact, which should have given it enough time to stop given the car's 43mph speed.

The problem was that Uber's software became confused, according to the NTSB. "As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path," the report says.

Things got worse from there.

At 1.3 seconds before impact, the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision. According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. The system is not designed to alert the operator.

The vehicle was a modified Volvo XC90 SUV. That vehicle comes with emergency braking capabilities, but Uber automatically disabled these capabilities while its software was active.

Who goes to prison for manslaughter?

Who goes to prison for manslaughter?

Assuming that no one person within Uber can be found to take the blame, then using the Harry S. Truman inscription "the buck stops here".
Dara Khosrowshahi

Who goes to prison for manslaughter?

Assuming that no one person within Uber can be found to take the blame, then using the Harry S. Truman inscription "the buck stops here".
Dara Khosrowshahi

Why only one? If it is a conspiracy then all can and should go.

Any "office of the company" may go to prison, and this may travel a fair way down the corporate food chain. It all depends on the level of culpability and exactly how the charges are framed. But in serious cases the CEO, financial director and (product) safety director are certainly in the frame, plus their advisors in the field of work that caused the deaths, lower down the chain safety and test managers may find the fines and criminal records sufficient for them to effectively end their careers.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Big Ooops.
I think there will be some questions asked about the maintenance of this particular aircraft.

A Boeing 737 operated by Jayawijaya Dirgantara suffered a runway excursion at Wamena Airport,Papua, Indonesia.
After landing, when the thrust reversers were deployed, the no.2 engine reverser clam shell doors with supporting structure separated from the airplane.
Directional control was lost and the aircraft ran off the runway onto the grass.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I'm not too sure what the Safety Elves would think of this event:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-44279874

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

It helps if you know how to drive if you are a car thief. Stolen BMW flipped just seconds after Rishton burglary

Bus crash in English town centre injures more than a dozen people, damages 25 cars.

A bus that careered through a town centre in England has left a trail of 25 damaged cars and injured more than a dozen people.
Dartford was brought to a standstill after the bus ploughed down one of the main streets just before 7:00pm on Tuesday (local time).

Kent police said 14 people were reported as "walking wounded" and received treatment at the scene, including one person who required oxygen.
Multiple vehicles also suffered varying degrees of damage.
A man has been arrested on suspicion of careless driving and remains in police custody.

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Grant
Darwin NT