The accident where a train ran into the back of a stationary one on the Pepsi Max Big One (sounds Japanese but it was designed by an American company, Arrow Dynamics Inc) rollercoaster in Blackpool on Thursday – the thing is apparently so high that it has to have aircraft warning beacons on it, and needed approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority, is being blamed on a computer failing to stop the moving train when the first one stopped, and it has brought out all the hoary old variants of the system is computer-controlled and nothing can go wrong uh go wrong uh go wrong uh go variety, but it reminds us of the great Dutch computer scientist Edsgar Dijkstra who was so alarmed when he heard a speaker at a conference say that many lifts are microprocessor controlled that he leaped in with can the speaker tell me which elevators are microprocessor controlled so that I can avoid riding in them?
