JUST PLANE CULTURE
Complacency Revisited
look at one issue: complacency. In this respect, complacency is failure to act appropriately and resting too much on our laurels. Complacency, at fi rst blush, is not a problem. Don’t we have a moment of complacency when we have com- pleted a big project and refl ect on what was accomplished? It becomes a problem when it hinders other activities or blinds us to other problems. Excess complacency is the problem. There was an accident on the “L” train blue line going to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The operator failed to stop and ran through the boarding area, went through the barriers and proceeded partially up the escalator toward the airport terminal. It was all caught on a security camera and was a devastating accident. Surprisingly, no one was seriously injured.
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11.12 2014
28
e are used to looking at human factor prob- lems with a focus on the employee, so let’s turn this around and look at human factors problem focused on management. I’ll only
By Patrick Kinane
The investigation revealed that several safety devices were designed to stop the train automatically. The barrier at the end of the track had failed in its task. The train operator admitted that she had dozed off just as the train entered the terminal — aha, a victim was found and terminated. The train was not speeding but the train had produced enough kinetic energy even at slow speed to climb the escalator to the airport terminal. The train operator was a fi ll in, so she works diff erent shifts at diff erent times to fi ll in for manpower gaps. The operator was trained properly; however, she had a previous incident with dozing off and missing a stop. What would you do? The transit authority has had a “zero accident” policy in place for some time. Its instant decision was to fi re the train operator and also fi nd out why the safety devices, although activated, failed to stop the train. I see this all too often — “let’s have a fair trial right after the hanging.” All in all, this sounds like a reasonable approach, a perfect example to tag some “Dirty Dozen” labels on it and put it to rest. Fatigue comes up immediately; we can also add a cup of lack of
DOMmagazine
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