Dead Man's Switch Debate

Comments discuss the need for, implementation of, and failures in dead man's switches, manual overrides, and other fail-safe mechanisms in autonomous or controlled systems, often referencing a specific incident.

📉 Falling 0.5x Hardware
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Keywords

AFAIK e.g IBM AIR BRS CEO switch dead red reset safety man override manual rail trains

Sample Comments

rohit89 • Oct 24, 2011 • View on HN

They should put some sort of manual override switch.

bluejekyll • Jun 18, 2018 • View on HN

They have an emergency mode for a reason...

bhhaskin • May 27, 2020 • View on HN

I would imagine they would have control lockouts as well. Not something super complicated/time consuming to disengage, but something to prefect that exact scenario from happening.

cddotdotslash • Feb 1, 2019 • View on HN

Sounds like they built a dead-man's switch and then broke the process through which the man and the switch communicate.

samfisher83 • Jan 30, 2019 • View on HN

There should be manual override. What if this happened in-AIR?

k__ • Aug 17, 2018 • View on HN

Can't you just add a dead mans switch?

rthomas6 • Sep 19, 2017 • View on HN

Maybe they have a mil-spec fallback mechanism (manual control, maybe?). Would that suffice?

mrfusion • Jan 3, 2016 • View on HN

Awesome. What fail safes do you have?

colordrops • Apr 18, 2022 • View on HN

What are you using for a deadman switch?

wooster • Dec 1, 2010 • View on HN

Yeah, it's pretty clearly a dead man switch.