distraction – Page 3 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

New old US research into driving and talking

The New York Times has revealed research on the hazards of driving and using mobile phones that was withheld since 2003. The newspaper understandably focuses on the intrigue that prevented the report from being released but the content of the report has the potential to substantially change how companies “manage” the hazard of their staff using mobile phones whilst driving.

The report, obtained through Freedom of Information and made available on the newspaper’s website, was a substantial project for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and, according to NYTimes:

“The research mirrors other studies about the dangers of multitasking behind the wheel. Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content.”

The full report is available by clicking on the image in this post.

Kevin Jones

Driving and talking

The issue of driving while using a mobile is a perennial issue for the media but nothing much changes. The New York Times on 20 July 2009 carried an article on the latest research which confirms many previous studies that using a mobile phone while driving increases the risk of an accident.

Pages from 6i17 raw No US State has banned the practice because social use of mobile phones has become so widespread that any ban is impossible to enforce effectively.

In January 2009, SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on the recommendations from WorkSafe Victoria on the matter. Even in their guide they would say nothing more than

“recommend that hands free calls be kept to a minimum”.

At some point for most workplace hazards, the evidence outweighs the enforcement difficulties and bans ensue. It has happened to asbestos, it has happened with smoking, but these are decades after dancing around the most effective control measure – elimination.

Pages from 6i02 v4 The industrialised world, in particular, has been wrestling with the hazard of phones and driving for well over a decade. One report from 2002 said

“Tests carried out by scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory established that driving behaviour is impaired more by using a mobile phone than by being over the legal alcohol limit.”

The footnote to this comment said

“Previous research has shown that phone conversations while driving impair performance. It was difficult to quantify the risk of this impairment because the reference was usually made to normal driving without using a phone. “Worse than normal driving” does not necessarily mean dangerous. There was a need therefore to benchmark driving performance while using a mobile phone to a clearly dangerous level of performance. Driving with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit is an established danger.”

There are always conditions set with research findings but these are sensible and valid.

Pages from 3i13 According to a 2004 report by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported by UPI (unable to find a link)

“…estimated 8 percent of all motorists — about 1.2 million drivers — were using cell phones at any given time while driving, up from 6 percent in 2002 and 4 percent in 2000. About 800,000 of those drivers used handsets and not hands-free devices.

Handheld cell phone use increased from 5 percent to 8 percent among drivers aged 15 to 24 between 2002 and 2004.

Use of cellular-phone handsets increased from 4 percent to 6 percent of female drivers, while the number of men talking on handheld cell phones while driving remained constant at 4 percent.

Motorists were more likely to use a cell phone while driving alone, but drivers with children in the vehicle were just as likely to use the phone as those without children in the car.”

For those readers who like dollar figures, the same UPI article stated

“A 2002 study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, part of Harvard University’s School of Public Health, found drivers using cell phones caused 1.5 million accidents annually resulting in 2,600 deaths and 570,000 injuries.

Researchers estimated banning cell phone use in vehicles would cost $43 billion a year in lost economic activity.”

[The only HCRA report on the website is is a 2003 study – Cohen, J.T. and Graham, J.D. A revised economic analysis of restrictions on the use of cell phones while driving. Risk Analysis. 2003; 23(1):5-17.]

A September 2003 report from NIOSH lists a range of driver hazards related to work activities and is worth downloading. Pages 51-555 deal specifically with phone use.

(If any reader knows of a literature review on this topic, please contact SafetyAtWorkBlog)

This workplace hazard has been around for so long that in the opinion of SafetyAtWorkBlog, when someone is driving a work vehicle 100% of their attention should be on the principal task at hand – driving.

Achieving this realistic aim can be helped by

not passing on mobile phone numbers when one knows the person is driving. The low tech alternative of taking a message works.
having employees turn off the phone while driving. (The phone does have an OFF switch)
not fitting workplace vehicles with hands-free units.
reminding employees of the safe driving policies of the business; and
enforcing those policies so that employees know that dangerous acts will not be tolerated or compensated by the company.

Above all, employees must be informed of the risks involved with distraction, must be reassured that employers will support safe actions, and must realise the affect on other drivers and their families from their own mistakes.

Kevin Jones

Decency at work

In 2001 the House of Lords was presented with a Dignity At Work Bill. This seemed a great idea for unifying different elements of the workplace that can contribute to psychosocial hazards. This would be a similar approach to using “impairment” to cover drugs, alcohol, fatigue and distraction. However, it never progressed.

Regular readers of SafetyAtWorkBlog would note an undercurrent of humanism in many of the articles but it is heartening to see this in other articles and blogs. Maud Purcell of Greenwich Times provides an article from early May 2009 on dignity in the workplace in a time of economic turmoil that you may find of interest and use.

Kevin Jones

Fatigue is the biggest threat to a person’s safety

Not so long ago, it was considered a legitimate criticism to blame the individual for “doing the wrong thing” at work. Depending on the type of worksite, this was considered “human error” or “bloody stupid”.

Fatigue is an interesting illustration of how occupational health and safety must cope with new perspectives on established hazards. Australian OHS legislation operates on a responsibility to manage the systems of work in a workplace, of which only one element is the worker.

A good incident investigation goes beyond the incident to see what led up to a worker acting the way they did, the reasons behind the decision. Instead of “tell me about your childhood”, OHS practitioners can legitimately ask “tell me about your sleep patterns”, or “tell me about your second job”, or “tell me about your relationship with your partner”, as these can be contributory factors to the decision made on the day or the work environment at the time of the incident.

Some recent AAP articles provide interesting examples of the different contexts in which fatigue as a workplace issue can manifest:

“Ambulance Employees Australia (AEA) said weary paramedics had fallen asleep at the wheel and administered wrong drugs because they did not have enough time off between shifts.

They have called for a minimum 10-hour break between shifts, compared with eight hours under the current award.

But Ambulance Victoria has said the fatigue issue was one of 175 union claims, which it said sought $800 million from pay talks.”

“Investigators examining the near-catastrophe at Melbourne Airport last month are exploring whether fatigue was a factor after being told the pilot had barely slept the day before the flight.

Emirates pilots are permitted to fly a maximum of 100 hours each 28 days and the pilot was also almost at the legal threshold of the number of hours he was able to fly.

Emirates has issued a statement saying safety was a top priority for the airline.”

A higher priority than a good night’s sleep apparently! Clearly it is the spread of hours that is the issue not the total over a fixed period.

Both these examples relate to workers’ interactions with the public and reflect the complexity of OHS’s spread to public safety.

It seems that every investigation now automatically assesses the fatigue level, or impairment, of the participants in incidents in the same way mobile phone records are checked in car accidents and blood-alcohol levels or drug testing in some industrial events.

If your OHS professional does not consider psychosocial issues in developing safety management plans or incident investigation, seek a second opinion, or better yet, make sure the first opinion is comprehensive.

Kevin Jones

Role of OHS Inspectors

There have been several incidents recently that illustrate the unenviable pressures on inspectors and Australian OHS regulators.

The Tasmanian Coroner found that the mining inspectorate of Workplace Standards Tasmania was “inadequate” and incapable of “of carrying out its core function of inspecting and enforcing best safety practices within the mining industry.” Two inspectors for that State’s mining sector- a sector that in 2007/08 was 621 mining leases strong, according to the Annual Report of Mineral Resources Tasmania.

The construction union (CFMEU) in Victoria was highly critical of WorkSafe Victoria following a scaffolding collapse in a main street of the suburb, Prahran. A similar event occurred in Sydney a couple of days later.

However, OHS legislation clearly states the employer is responsible for safety in workplaces, as WorkSafe reiterated in a press statement. TV an press reports did not quote the construction union official criticising the construction company or project manager for having the scaffold collapse on their worksite.

(The CFMEU provides a scaffolding checklist on its website.)

In the scaffolding situation a union criticising the OHS regulator is a peculiar distraction from the obvious failure of the organisation that has control of the worksite, the employer. In the Beaconsfield case, the distraction is just as effective and allows the employer to feel that less attention, less criticism, equates to the incident or the fatality being considered of a lesser significance.

The days of government certification for scaffolding, boilers & Pressure vessels, and a raft of other work items disappeared almost twenty years ago in many Australian States. One of the reasons this occurred was that regulators realised that by certifying something, by granting official approval, the regulator took on some of the responsibility for the work item. Most regulators, with government support, realised that it was in their interest to re-emphasise the employers’ legislative obligations that had existed in law for some time.

One does not need to physically visit worksites to encourage “best practice”. No inspectorate would expect every workplace to be visited by inspectors but high-risk workplaces, such as mines, may have this expectation.

It seems increasingly popular for the OHS inspectorate to be called in early on high hazard organisations (HHO) projects. (HHO is a concept most recently discussed by Jan Hayes and discussed elsewhere in the works of Professor Andrew Hopkins) This enables projects to meet high safety standards in the planning stage.

OHS regulators have a delicate balancing act between consultation and enforcement. This is a balance that is constantly being tweaked as political, economic and social pressures fluctuate. The process is not helped b y fingers being pointed in the wrong directions.

Kevin Jones

[NOTE:Professor Michael Quinlan of UNSW, Middlesex University and University of Sydney) will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Safety in Action 2009 Conference on 2 April 2009 concerning the results of a five-year research report into what OHS Inspectors do and the implications for employers and safety professionals.]

Is technology the solution to everything?

Today, I received a media statement by the Acting Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Mark V. Rosenker. He said that new technologies have the potential to substantially reduce rail incidents. Rosenker is quoted as saying

“Just think how far computer and GPS technology has developed in the past 10 years.”

He urged the delegates at the International Railroad Safety Conference in Denver, Colorado on 6 October 2008 to

“… be forward thinking. Work closely with the highway industry to develop useful, intelligent transportation safety systems that can prevent accidents at grade crossings.”

In mid-September 2008, the a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train collided in Chatsworth, California, killing 25 people. The engineer of the Metrolink train was using new technology – he was texting on his mobile phone instead of paying attention.

I can’t see how the new technologies that Mark Rosenker discusses:

electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) braking, acoustic bearing detectors, wheel impact detectors, … truck performance detectors [and] intelligent transportation systems (ITS)…”

would have stopped the deaths of 25 people in Chatsworth?

I realise that the NTSB investigation into the Chatsworth collision has a way to go but I will be listening for some non-technological control measures to be proposed as well. The NTSB is going to need to keep up its “qualification, training and oversight of employees” that it has implemented in the last decade or so becasue clearly in the case of the Metrolink engineer, Robert Sanchez, these techniques failed.

Category: distraction

New old US research into driving and talking

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Driving and talking

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Decency at work

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Fatigue is the biggest threat to a person’s safety

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Role of OHS Inspectors

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Is technology the solution to everything?

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