Would you be willing to trust technology more than humans if your life depended on it?

In this day and age, and with the technology we have, it’s still shocking to think that crashes, whether they are in the air or on the road, are not able to be prevented fully. Yes, there are now rear camera sensors on cars, and yes, planes have a multitude of settings and ways to stop crashes, but we still don’t have the complete security of knowing we won’t be involved in a tragic accident.

Since the startling and upsetting air tragedies of the past year, there has been talk of whether or not we should have pilot-less planes. Some say that is essentially what we have, but there is that hard question: do we trust a computer more than we trust a living, breathing human? There’s human error when there’s a person sitting behind the controls, but would it be the same if the plane just flew itself?

It may be a question best left to the experts but when we know how precious life is, especially as over 60s, and as our world changes to adapt to our lifestyles.

It’s interesting to note, then, to anyone who says they would hate to have a computer fly their plane, that the cockpit has vastly changed in even the last 10 years, as now pilots have become less in control of the actual joysticks and have become more computer operators. Gone are the analogue dials and gauges. Now, a cockpit is full of digital displays and automation is so sophisticated that The Atlantic reports that pilots roughly touch the controls for three minutes of a usual flight. Instead, today’s pilots monitor screens and key in data.

Of course we wouldn’t have known all of this as passengers are no longer invited into the cockpit. Years ago a select few people could come and see how the plane works and what a pilot does. It was a thrill for children but 9/11 changed that all and any attempts to enter a cockpit can become a criminal matter.

So the problem is that being a pilot now is less of a reflex-based job and Jan Noyes, an ergonomics expert at Britain’s University of Bristol, believes new technology has deskilled crew members. With that said, autopilot has improved flight safety by reducing pilot fatigue and warnings of issues. Therefore, although autopilot is a great way of controlling a flight, pilots still can control the plane and make an error despite what the plane’s system says to do. And when an autopilot system fails, too many pilots, thrust abruptly into what has become a rare role, make mistakes.

Furthermore, the ability to taken over the controls for the worst was exhibited in the recent Germanwings crash where the pilot deliberately flew the plane into the French Alps despite warnings on screens that he was flying too low.

It brings us back the main point – should we be letting pilots control the plane even though they could make a devastating, albeit rare, mistake? It’s a hypothetical question, as there are still so many pilots in the world who are highly skilled, but it’s not too far-fetched to think that soon our planes and cars will be able to be trusted. It’s a sad fact that airline pilots used to be the heroes of the skies. But now, in a disastrous year in aviation, some have lost their confidence in pilots. Vanity Fairot, f reports that most of these crashes have been caused by a series of small errors that turned the state-of-the-art cockpit into a death trap.

So which is worse? A human error or a computer error? Tell us your thoughts below.