Page 10 - OHS, October 2022

TRAINING: TRANSPORTATION SAFETY
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.
TBY RAY PREST
he 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, 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 goods across the country. And the current solutions clearly aren’t working.
The problem with managing human factors with rules is that it assumes people are aware of the increased risk human factors pose and are consciously choosing to operate that way. But most people aren’t even aware of human factors or how they can skew their perception of risk. You can’t blame them for something they’re not even aware of. Which is why the industry needs to focus less on regulating humans, and more on managing human factors.
Fatigue and rushing are two of the most prevalent human factors for truckers and similar categories of workers. They’re
also among most common physical and mental states that affect workplace risk, along with frustration and complacency. Think of them as the four horsemen of human factors that cause havoc whenever they’re allowed to gallop down the road or through the workplace. But there are plenty of others too: ambiguity, poor communication, overconfidence, distraction.
I’ve been studying human factors for almost two decades. I’ve read countless reports, commissioned surveys, and my colleagues and I have even conducted our own primary research. One of the things I’ve learned is that human factors are like mice—there’s never just one or two. As any homeowner knows, if you see one mouse scurrying out in the open, there’s bound to be whole nest of them somewhere in the walls. So, when human factors are topping the list of fatal transportation incidents, there’s clearly a problem.
Not everything is doom and gloom, however, and the transportation industry is ahead of the curve in some ways. The logbooks, rules about continuous driving and regulations that govern driver
10 Occupational Health & Safety | OCTOBER 2022
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