Page 70 - Occupational Health & Safety, June 2018

HAZARD AWARENESS
in my book “Be Safe.” It is my intention to write a series of articles to share these findings with you. Hopefully you will share these articles with your co-workers. Going on offense to protect each other from harm is long overdue, but it starts right now by learn- ing about your own human limitations.
Memories can be accurate accounts from the past, but they may also be combined with details from a completely separate event. This can allow memories to be highly inaccurate and change over time.
Our Visual Limitations
There are only three areas of human limitations that cause ac- cidents. They gain their power to harm us because we operate daily as if we don’t possess any limitations at all. Two of these limitations are created by our biology. These can be found in the amount of information we can see in one second and in the pro- cessing and retrieving of memories. We vastly overestimate the amount of information we see in any work environment, and we believe our memories to be an accurate account of work pro- cedures. Memories can be accurate accounts from the past, but they may also be combined with details from a completely sepa- rate event. This can allow memories to be highly inaccurate and change over time. The third human limitation comes from our ability to be highly creative. We possess the power to take incom- plete information and draw false conclusions. We compile these conclusions into a belief system that holds true beliefs and false beliefs. Our beliefs are the foundation of our emotions, negative thoughts, available intelligence, and unsafe actions.
One of mankind’s greatest weaknesses is that we cannot dif- ferentiate between reality formed from wisdom and an illusion formed by false beliefs. The confusion is born in that each person holds a belief of truthfulness for what they have created. This is the birthplace of overconfidence, rushing, daydreaming, breakdowns in communication, and control issues, just to name a few. When we hold false beliefs as a part of the software programming within our minds, our actions are a reflection of these error-filled beliefs. Our limitations in memory and self-created beliefs will be revealed in greater detail in future articles, but the greatest gain you can make today, for your safety tomorrow on the job, is to understand your visual limitations.
The most continuous limitation can be found in that there is much more information within any environment than you can mentally download through your vision. To say we are perform- ing our jobs partially blindfolded is not as far from reality as you may believe. For example, let’s say there are one million bits of information around you at the job site. At your maximum po- tential, you are only able to absorb and process about 2,000 bits of information each second. Glancing around the job site for 10 seconds, you will see only 20,000 bits of information at best. This number reduces quickly on dark rainy nights and can go down
to zero when you are swept away into a daydream. This leaves the vast majority of your environment unexamined and hiding possible hazards in plain view. In order to try to compensate for an overload of possible information, your mind quickly ignores information it deems unimportant and focuses in on information it expects to see and deems important. This predisposed expec- tation forms a mental blindness to items out of the ordinary or different from your past experiences.
People walking down the street talking on cell phones have fall- en into manholes and walked out in front of buses. If this is the case while walking down the street, imagine how this condition is com- pounded while driving 60 miles per hour down a busy highway or operating fast-moving incredibly powerful machinery. What we have experienced in the past is a strong determining factor for what our minds will deem worthy of noticing. People who have never been around motorcycles are more prone to pull out in front of an oncoming street bike than current or past bike riders. It is why after spending an evening out with your spouse at a friend’s house, she may ask, “Did you like the color of the carpeting you walked on all night?” You never made it past the 12-point buck hanging on the wall or the pool table, so you respond, “I didn’t notice.” Your belief system focuses in on different items than your wife’s does, because you possess different interests. It is usually after you buy that new car that seemed so unique and special on the car lot that you begin seeing the identical car everywhere you go.
Most people believe they take in many more de- tails from the environment than they actually do. This visual limitation explains why people have walked into low-hanging power lines they didn’t see and were electrocuted.
Most people believe they take in many more details from the environment than they actually do. This visual limitation ex- plains why people have walked into low-hanging power lines they didn’t see and were electrocuted. They didn’t expect the wire to be hanging low, so it went unnoticed. Knowing this nat- ural vulnerability exists, you can develop ways to be more aware of your surroundings.
My growing understanding of visual limitations gave me the power to compensate effectively for greater protection. When I re- alized I can absorb only 2,000 bits of information each second, my first response was to consciously refuse to limit this ability further through compulsive thinking or daydreaming. When in the pres- ence of any hazard, no thought should be allowed that isn’t focused on the task at hand, and ignoring this rule quickly lowers the bits per second seen. The second step I utilized was in giving my pow- ers of vision more time to focus in on possible dangers. I did this by using the, “What am I not seeing?” phrase that I said to myself as I scanned the work area.
During the last year of working before I retired, I was preparing to close a high-voltage switch just outside of a substation when I asked myself, “What am I not seeing?” I scanned the area for 30 sec-
66 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2018
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