The Times has written a blog-article on the proportion of the new UK government who went to Oxford (in fairness, I must point out that some proportion went to the Other Place, which is also rumored to be quite good). A perennial topic. I enjoyed reading the comments. But then I wondered whether the question…
The Economist has of course a Briefing on the Effects of the Ash Cloud from Eyjafjallajökull on the political economy of flight, which informs its lead commentary in the April 24th 2010 edition, about this incident, entitled Earthly Powers. Both articles recount that the “safe level” of ash was determined by the CAA (in Britain,…
The ash cloud over Europe seems to have abated somewhat, and commercial air traffic is returning to the air. The German DLR organisation (equivalent to the US NASA) sent up test flights of a Falcon 20E on Monday and Tuesday 19-20 April, to measure what was up there. The report, in English, makes interesting reading…
The biggest political problem of the week seems to be that airlines have stopped flying in Europe, because of the ash cloud from the volcano Eyjafjallajökull. I must say that in Bielefeld it is wonderful to see the sky without the usual 15 or so condensation trails and the ensuing cirrus, but my wine/tea/coffee merchant…
The archives of the University of York Safety-Critical Systems Mailing List start on 19 May, 1995, 15 years ago. I took a look at some of the older archives, up until December 2001, and remembered many names of former avid contributors. Two notable regulars, Peter Mellor and Peter Amey, no longer contribute because they are…
On Friday evening, 26th February, we suffered an accident. In what is known as the Swiss Cheese Model, stemming in all but name from Jim Reason, all the holes lined up. Pictures of the Swiss Cheese Model abound, for example here and here and here. The idea of the Swiss Cheese Model is that there…
Prof. John McDermid of the University of York asked me if I had documentation for the suggestion in my post on the Buizingen collision that the number of fatalities to trackside workers expected in installing ATP universally on rail tracks might be larger than the number of passenger lives expected to be saved by ATP.…
At 08.30 am MET (07.30 am UTC) on Monday, 15 February 2010, a commuter train and an intercity train collided in Buizingen, in the greater Brussels region. Initial reports mentioned a “head on” collision, but De Standaard reported (in Dutch) that one train ran into the side of another, presumably at a set of points.…
There are areas of technological safety which are almost all about people and behavior, for example road safety. Roads form a very open system; there are pedestrians, young children, old people, slow people, cyclists, animals, parked cars, broken-down cars, large users and so on. There are some technical things one can do to improve safety,…
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