Looking to the Sky for Training and Managing Human Factors in Transportation
Most people aren’t aware of human factors or how they can skew their perception of risk.
The transportation industry has a human factors problem. Consider this: From 2005 to 2009, the volume of fatal crashes involving large trucks or buses dropped by a third. At the time, it felt like some progress was finally being made in the number of transportation-relating incidents. But over the following decade, from 2009 to 2018, incidents rose by 47 percent. Perhaps not coincidentally, in 2009, the first Android phone was released to much fanfare, joining the relatively new iPhone in a burgeoning market for distraction-inducing smartphone.
Transportation’s human factors problem is not just an issue of buzzes and beeps and glowing screens. In 2019, a third of all fatal incidents involving large trucks or buses were caused by what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration calls “driver-related factors.” (That’s a huge percentage, and you know as well as I do how underreported it likely is; tellingly, vehicle-related factors like blown tires were cited only 5 percent of the time.) Notably, distraction was only the second-biggest cause. Speeding and other forms of rushing were the first, with impairment (which includes fatigue) coming in third place. The top three causes of fatal incidents are all human factors.
If you work in the transportation sector, you don’t need me—or a bunch of statistics—to tell you that multiple human factors are an issue for the industry. Off the top of your head, you can likely rattle off all sorts of workplace incidents you’ve heard about or witnessed that involve distraction, fatigue or rushing. Not to mention the litany of industry rules and regulations that have been put in place specifically to manage these human factors.
Speed inhibitors. Mandates on the number of hours truckers can drive in a single day. Anti-distracted driving laws. All of these are intended to protect professional drivers from their own human error. And how are all these measures faring in managing tiredness in the transportation industry? Look no further than the statistics that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. Like I said, the industry has a human factors problem.
Or more specifically, a human factors management problem. Because error-causing states aren’t unique to the transportation industry, but they can be uniquely dangerous for folks who spend hours and hours moving people and good across the country. And the current solutions clearly aren’t working.
This article originally appeared in the October 1, 2022 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.