I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.
Interesting. I see the same default response to accidents in self-driving cars. It's because the driver didn't have their hands on the wheel. It's because the driver fell asleep.
If you're referring to Tesla's Autopilot, Tesla's legal stance has always been very clear - you are driving the car and it is your responsibility to pay attention. Now their marketing is very different and confuses people and I can understand why people would think otherwise, but Tesla has never waivered from "it's your fault, not ours" when something goes wrong.
So yes, if you fall asleep or don't have your hands on the wheel while driving, it is your fault for being a shitty driver. I hate how Tesla has marketed Autopilot, but I cannot feel bad for the people stupid enough to fall asleep at the wheel.
And when it's the marketing department saying "X" in big print in flashy brochures and ads, and the legal department and their small print saying "not X in ways that kill purchasers expecting X", I'd expect company officers to be facing jail time.
I'd love for Tesla to be transparent about this as well, but the onus is on the driver to understand how their car works. Maybe we need higher standards for getting a driver's license.
Of course it did, but it was probably spelled differently, like “a merger would enhance our ability to fight regulation”. The regulations being things like “you have to have planes that don’t rapidly fly into the ground for no reason” etc.
There are many thousands if not millions of humans involved. Successful business affects so many even far removed from the company. Large companies like these are often heavily invested by institutional investors covering many of the populations pensions.
If you drove to the store in a car you knew had faulty brakes and killed someone: yes you would be pursuing milk at the expense of human lives. And I guarantee you if they could prove you knew your brakes were bad, the punishment would absolutely be worse than if you just had an unpreventable accident.
This assumes Boeing had a priori knowledge that the system would cause a crash.
The fact that the system safety analysis didn't label it 'catastrophic' seems to indicate they didn't know this. This doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that they should have, or that they still didn't follow their design procedures stating redundant senaors
“I didn’t KNOW removing three of the four brakes on my car would cause a crash” is an argument you could make. I wouldn’t want to stake my freedom on it.
Yes. Driving is dangerous. Our society has just deemed its danger acceptable even though we know how many people die because we are so dependent on cars. This is the grim fact of the matter.
It's like going to get milk every day for 20 years, then deciding to let your sometimes reliable brother get milk for you because it's cheaper, and after they kill people in a wreck getting milk you keep on letting them get milk for you.
Not trying to be a Boeing apologist, but if the bar is "zero risk" almost no business plan in industry would be implemented.
They have to acknowledge at some point that lives may be at risk in their business. Whether or not that risk level is a acceptable and that they properly gauge that risk 8s another matter
It's retroactively true with knowledge current events, but does not answer the question 'Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas?' at that point in history with respect to "at the expense of human lives"
Lets do a thought experiment, what would Boeing do about this situation if their feet weren't being held to the fire, what did they do with their initial knowledge of it?