Lawyers; far too many lawyers; far, far too many lawyers - especially in big corporations & goberment.

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

For a deadly reminder:


Genoa bridge disaster: Risk of collapse 'was known for years'
wrote:

An Italian trial into the 2018 Genoa bridge disaster that killed 43 people has heard it was known for years there was a risk it might collapse...

... the risk was raised at a meeting eight years before the tragedy. "It emerged that the bridge had an original design defect and that there was a collapse risk," he told the trial investigating what caused a 200m stretch of highway to break off from the bridge...

... he had asked in 2010 if someone could certify the bridge's safety. ... General Manager of Autostrade per l'Italia (Aspi), replied: "there's the self-certification"...

Self-certified extra profits for a few years more... And for that one year too far?...

Stay safe folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Deadly evil:


How social media giants are exploiting vulnerabilities to get young people...


The consequence is:

Children die, or at best are messed up for a miss-shaped life.


What price for Corporate Greed?

All in our only one world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

More evil profit and the consequences be damned:


Promoting vapes to kids is ridiculous...
wrote:

It is "ridiculous" that vapes are promoted to children, Rishi Sunak has said as he pledged to look at ways of strengthening marketing rules...

... It is illegal to sell vapes to under-18s.

NHS figures released last year found that while there was a fall in the number of school children taking drugs and smoking cigarettes, vape usage had risen to 9% among 11 to 15-year-olds in England - up from 6% in 2018.

In the same period, vaping among 15-year-old girls jumped from 10% to 21%...

Packaged in bright colours, with glitzy packaging, cool advertising, and sweet tasting... What's not to like?...

Really??


All in our deadly greedy Corporate world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Packaged in bright colours, with glitzy packaging, cool advertising, and sweet tasting... What's not to like?...

Highly addictive ...
A perfect long term revenue stream, just exactly what the shareholders want and you know the fiduciary duty ...

Deadly evil:


How social media giants are exploiting vulnerabilities to get young people...


The consequence is:

Children die, or at best are messed up for a miss-shaped life.


What price for Corporate Greed?

Is this this first of the push-back?


Social media may harm kids. US Surgeon General says so
wrote:

That's a warning and not permission [to do so], in case you were wondering...

... "Much of the evidence we do have indicates that there is enough reason to be deeply concerned about the risk of harm social media poses. For example, adolescents who spend >3 hours per day on social media face double the risk of developing symptoms of depression and anxiety."...

... The Surgeon General's advisory asserts a link between extreme content available on social media and self-harm...

... Recently, more than 40 school districts have filed lawsuits based on mental health claims against major social media companies including Meta and its subsidiaries, Alphabet and its Google and YouTube subsidiaries, and TikTok owner ByteDance...

... "Defendants’ misconduct is a substantial factor resulting in a youth mental health crisis, which has been marked by increasingly higher proportions of minors struggling with anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and suicidal ideation," the Mars Area School District complaint says, arguing that the defendant social media firms should pay for the mental health services that 96 percent of school districts now provide to students...

... Policymakers are told to "strengthen safety standards and limit access" ... None of these recommendations are specific enough to elicit opposition. Nor do they acknowledge obstacles like companies actively blocking researchers from studying their data and algorithms, or downplaying internal findings about the mental health consequences of social media...

Take a day off from poisonous tech?...

All in our only one world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Definitely belongs here.

Poor Jayne lost her head over this back in '67, and thousands more since, yet very little has changed.

Trapped Under Trucks.

All for the sake of a couple hundred bucks they cause such death and destruction.
Having watched a car bounce off the side under-run bars o a truck in the UK I can certainly vouch for them saving lives.

---

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

Ouch.

The federal government has been aware of the problem for at least five decades.

It was just over 5 decades that I witnessed my 2nd RTA
Not many realise that an artic on turning has to have the cab/tractor unit swing wide to enable the trailer to turn without incident.
It was in Highbury & an artic was turning left.
A motorcycle went up the inside as he turned left.
Poor sod. ended up under trailer - no side bars then.
Accident proved to be fatal.
Since then witnessed several, both on rear & sides of trucks.
None of those proved fatal & all because of rear & side bars.
I thought America was supposed to be the best & leading the way forward for many other countries.
ROFLMAO.

Further in that report Wiggo linked, they ONLY now set up a committee to look into the problem.
Sheesh.

Further in that report Wiggo linked, they ONLY now set up a committee to look into the problem.

Which would have happened a long time ago if a Senator had been wiped out in his home state.

---

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

Truckers are by and large conservative and they would see the extra weight and cost as an impediment and those who are liberal would see the extra weight and wind resistance as contributing to global warming.

Now as to those bars they even aren't a 50 state requirement on fuel tanker trucks to protect the bottom discharge pipes, so wonder about the I-95 bridge ....

Never mind that the truckers own the tractor, the trailers are owned by fleet leasing companies.

Wind resistance is a non-issue as the side-bars actually improve the airflow over trailer wheels and tyres, which can be further improved by the addition of a very light weight plastic skin.
Weight is minimal when one considers that many truck-trailer combinations are running well below maximum, and the weight of the long sleeper cabs that some truckers love is far greater than that of the side bars.

In reality it boils down to laziness and profiteering by the owners and operators who combined form a very large pressure group to prevent change or real improvement in safety.

---

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

Sounds deadly familiar? Especially for blaming the pilots??...


Croydon tram crash: Driver not guilty over fatal derailment
wrote:

The driver of a tram that crashed in Croydon in November 2016, killing seven people, has been cleared of failing to take reasonable care at work...

Croydon tram crash - the unanswered questions
wrote:

The man at the controls during Croydon's fatal tram crash cut a lonely figure in the dock at the Old Bailey... faced cross-examination for two days over the disaster, which killed seven people and injured many others.

He was one of the better drivers on the south London tram system, the court was told. He was diligent at work...

... So, what happened? Why, while at the controls of Tram 2551, did it reach a speed of 70 km/h into the sharpest corner of the tram network?...

... Sixty-nine passengers were on board when the tram derailed. All bar one were affected. The seven people who died were Dane Chinnery, Donald Collett, Robert Huxley, Philip Logan, Dorota Rynkiewicz, Philip Seary and Mark Smith. Another 61 passengers were injured, of those 19 were seriously hurt. Many sustained life-changing injuries, from chronic pain to amputations...

... He told the jury he thought he was going in the opposite direction on [to] a stretch with no curve...

... "I turned up as a professional driver as I always do. It just went horribly wrong for me."...

... The defence was he didn't fall asleep but was disorientated, and a major contributor to that was environmental factors outside his control in the Sandilands tunnel including a lack of visual cues, poor speed limit signage and a lack of lighting. The court was shown videos that highlighted the lack of lighting in the tunnel. Many of the lights were broken...

... had not been maintained to the required levels...

... No risk assessment was ever carried out on a possible high-speed derailment on this sharp corner...

... Measures to control the risk of derailments were not in place...

... Both TfL [Transport for London] and the operator have pleaded guilty to not taking reasonable care under health and safety laws. They will be sentenced at a later date...

... Why were safeguards not in place? Why were previous incidents - including a near-miss on the same curve just 10 days prior to the crash - not followed up on?...

... the apparent issue of fatigue on the job came to light... The same survey revealed drivers were also scared to self-report near-misses...

... five drivers with the same operator in the previous five years had been disciplined and/or sacked for falling asleep while driving...

... many of these issues were systemic and structural at both TOL and TfL. An initial report by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) found fatigue was "not a factor" in the crash. But Mr Leibreich believes that was flawed and there was a long series of fatigue issues at the operator...

... a safety audit that was going on at the time of the crash and eventually cancelled by TfL...

... "This was culture," he said. "This was an accident that could have happened to any of the drivers on the Croydon Tram at the time..."

... And yet the Managers and Directors behind all this?...

Stay safe folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

According to the FTC, Amazon attempted to make it difficult for users to opt out of auto-enrolment because "those changes would also negatively affect Amazon's bottom line".

Yeah, about time. Every time I've ordered, Prime reared its ugly head. Have to keep hitting "continue without prime". It's a royal pita.
Amazon caught at it again

While in the UK, Companies fined for not paying minimum wage.

Those "pesky" computers messing up again.

Message 2121340
Too topical for the cafe & transport safety thread.

Apparently, this company knew from previous litigation, from employees making complaints, that there were significant issues with the hull of this vessel and the equipment. So that’s going to be the number one issue to be litigated.
Just like in Deepwater Horizon, there were apparently numerous warnings in this instance that the vessel was not capable of performing its mission safely. They had other runs that had to be abandoned because of problems. And there were whistleblowers talking about the lack of equipment or the insufficiency of equipment — especially in the hull and the window not being of sufficient strength.

Quotes from the report in the above message.

1.25 million from the fee paying passengers minus the cost of the expedition.
HOW much profit for OceanGate?

What is the the cost of the search & rescue attempt?
Who pays that cost?

What is the the cost of the search & rescue attempt?
Who pays that cost?

me, I'm a taxpayer

and to this point it may also be an investigation of a crime

Much serious, sensible, information has been given in interviews to the BBC such as

Titanic director James Cameron: 'OceanGate were warned'

It's not the advance warning which is important. The description of the actual, hard, facts which have been known since Sunday is crucial: loss of power, loss of communications, loss of navigation, detection of the sound of an implosion by the US Navy. Cameron also makes the significant observation that NO lives have previously been lost in the previous 60 years of ultra deep sea exploration.

It can be done. And it can be done safely. But these were a bunch of amateur cowboys in it for their personal egos. Much like most of modern politics.

I find it highly alarming that someone can build a submarine using a very novel technique, charge passengers a not insubstantial amount of money to dive to great depths in it and to have never had the vessel tested, but apparently refused to have the design interdependently verified.
All real commercial submarine I know of have undergone a rigorous design assessment in addition to type tests and regular tests, all of which are voluntary (unless your insurers say otherwise). Perhaps these V&V activities will be made mandatory after this very high profile RUD, with the loss of four innocent lives, plus that of the company CEO (a person I feel was culpable in this tragic loss).

---

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

There's a very good reason behind the safety theory of a sphere over a pill, the sides of a pill will fail under pressure.

The fraught journey to reach the Titanic.

For taking tourists down there a submersible needs to be made of multiple spheres, not a pill. Just add a couple of extra spheres and support to something like this would be a much safer idea.

Deepsea Challenger.

Also from that report

Cameron also suggested that there was a "terrible irony" in the loss of Titan and its crew, likening it to the loss of the Titanic itself back in 1912.
"We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings," he said. "OceanGate were warned."

Elsewhere.

More details are emerging about the complaints made by David Lochridge, OceanGate's former director of marine operations who said he was fired after raising safety concerns about the Titan.
Lochridge argued in 2018 that the method OceanGate had devised to ensure the hull's integrity — acoustic monitoring that could detect the sound of cracks and pops as the hull strained under pressure — could "subject passengers to potential extreme danger".

"This type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull," Lochridge's attorneys wrote in a wrongful termination claim.

OceanGate sued Lochridge, who is not an engineer, for breach of contract, arguing that he had refused to accept the lead engineer's assurances and accusing him of improperly sharing confidential information.
The two sides settled their cases in November 2018.

Reporting by AP