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Re:NOAA Satellites Helped Save a Record 421 Lives in 2019 by tialaramex on Thursday January 23, 2020 @01:45PM (#22130399)
Risk Compensation has its worst effects when the prior risk itself is concealed by the technology. IIRC anti-lock braking doesn't drive up accident rates for those who grew up with it (all cars they drive have ABS, that's just how cars work as far as they're concerned) but it did for those for whom it just made loss of control mysteriously vanish in their new car. They would think "I guess I'm just good at driving" and engage in behaviour which the car was now compensating for with ABS, not realising that this mean they were outside the safe performance envelope.

AEB deliberately is a scary experience to prevent this mistake. If your car's AEB triggers you'll be suddenly and violently brought to a complete halt in order that the feeling is "Oh shit, I fucked up, is everybody OK?" not "Wow I'm a great driver".

With a beacon the experience is likewise not great. It's not "Activate beacon, rescuers magically teleport in and save the day". There's zero real feedback, so most people will be worried that it hasn't been effective, nobody is coming. After an hour, or two, or more, rescuers may show up looking for you. That's a long time to be lost or injured in the middle of nowhere.

Re:NOAA Satellites Helped Save a Record 421 Lives in 2019 by myself248 on Friday January 24, 2020 @12:05PM (#22140142)
> There's zero real feedback

That's why Return Link Messages in the Galileo network are so interesting. Basically, there's a super low bandwidth message channel embedded in the GNSS data stream. Its sole purpose is to tell beacons "We saw your beacon and we're responding to it".