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.