Q: Could you briefly explain your role, involvement and experience with regards to this seminar?
Dai Whittingham, UK Flight Safety Committee (DW): I have been involved in single and two-pilot flight operations for many years. In my current role with the UK Flight Safety Committee, I work to gain and share knowledge of aviation safety issues. Crew alertness and fatigue management are key elements of our safety systems.
Katja Kircher, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (KK): I have done research on many aspects of road user attention, which taught me a lot about the complexity of the topic and the associated methodological issues. This will also be my main topic for the seminar.
Toni Flint, Air Accident Investigation Branch (TF): I’m the human factors inspector of air accidents at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch. I’m responsible for investigating the human performance and behaviour aspects of aircraft accidents. In an investigation where we think pilot alertness was an issue, it’s my job to try and understand what influenced their performance, looking at the individual but more importantly the wider context of the task, environment and organisational factors.
Q: What are the main challenges encountered when trying to deal with the inherent risks associated with driver and pilot alertness?
DW: Commercial pressures to reduce manpower costs and hence employ fewer people to work longer hours. Enhanced automation is not always a positive when it comes to pilot/driver attention levels.
KK: I would say that we should ask the question the other way around – how can we build systems that best use the capability of humans and support them where they have difficulties? The main challenges would then be 1) to understand how human operators’ function with regard to alertness, and 2) to build a system that works hand in hand with these findings.
TF: People are naturally prone to losses of attention and no one can perform brilliantly for long periods under conditions of low workload. You can try to train people and raise their awareness of this, but you can’t eradicate this inherent weakness.
Q: What key topics are you excited to speak about?
DW: I am excited to discuss challenges for the future and the role of regulation.
KK: I am looking forward to discussing the implications of the shift from a concept of “distraction” to a concept of “attention”, and what that implies for both research and application.
TF: Cognitive psychology gives us a theoretical understanding of what performance effects we expect to see when people are not alert. I want to relate this to what kind of errors and behaviours have led to accidents in a real-world aviation context.
Q: Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme, and why?
DW: The Honourable Robert Sumwalt. He is a great speaker, he has ‘walked the walk’ as an aviator so has a deep personal understanding of our safety issues, and he now has a unique perspective of lessons from accidents in all transport domains.
KK: The programme as a whole looks very interesting, but I am especially curious about hearing from the transport areas that I do not encounter that much in my research – that is, rail and air.
TF: The whole programme looks fascinating. I’m looking forward to listening to Simon French to hear the latest on train driver awareness and what kind of recommendations the Rail Accident Investigation Branch have made in the area. It’s useful to know how these issues are investigated in other modes and I hope to learn about potentially effective mitigations in rail that could inspire mitigations in aviation.
Q: Why is it important for engineers and other professionals to join this seminar?
DW: Firstly, you should never stop learning. Secondly, human performance features in accidents in every industry and we need to learn from others if we are to reduce the accident rates in our own back yard.
KK: It might be a prejudice, but I think it is very useful for engineers to be aware of and appreciate how we humans actually function, because I am convinced that technical solutions have a much greater chance to succeed in the long run when the human is seen as a positive asset and contributor in a system instead of as a cause of error.
TF: It is a unique opportunity to step out of the boundaries of the sector we normally work in and be inspired by the work and knowledge of our peers in other sectors.
Q: What developments are you most interested in for the future and why?
DW: Eye tracking technology and automated safety systems have the potential to break the causal chain in accidents across the transport industry.
KK: Within transport, I would like to see a brave and fundamental shift to sustainable solutions, which includes not only technological advancements but also a shift in the societal attitude towards transport and certain privileges that we still seem to take for granted. The obvious reason why is that we need to make sure that we do everything we can to save our planet, so we should be at the forefront of developing and presenting solutions that are not only functional but also acceptable.
TF: We currently tend to see automation as a threat to alertness, but I think it has the potential to be an aid. I’m interested in any development in automation that keeps people naturally engaged in their task. I want to see future developments that better support people to focus their attention on the right things, that tolerate periods of time when people are less alert and that help people quickly regain focus when they need to.
Q: What lessons are there to be learned between other modes of transport or other operations when trying to mitigate the inherent risks?
DW: All modes of transport involve people with the same core behaviours and limitations, so what works in one mode will normally work in another. For example, eye-tracking systems developed to monitor alertness in truck drivers are now being used to target training for pilots.
KK: This is one of the questions that I am very interested in as well. In all transport modes we have humans who interact with various machines. I think, by systematically studying the commonalities and differences, we can learn a lot from each other.
TF: I hope to learn more from this event. My initial thought is that, in general, the various transport modes are at different places on a journey towards more automation. The road sector is probably earlier on this journey so can benefit from knowledge in the rail and aviation sectors about what has worked and what hasn’t. The sectors with more established use of automation can learn from the freer, rapid development of human-vehicle interface design in the automotive industry because it is not yet constrained by a long history of doing things in a certain way.
The Driver and Pilot Alertness seminar takes place on 5 December 2019 at One Birdcage Walk in London.
Join this event to:
- Gain insight into new approaches and technologies that can be used to understand, control and prevent accidents across the transport industry
- Stay up to date with the latest standards and regulation for ensuring driver and pilot alertness
- Learn best practice in designing human-machine interfaces in autonomous vehicles from the automotive sector
- Share ideas with your peers about how to best integrate human factors into the design process through our interactive panel discussion
- Network with human factors specialists, designers and engineers from the aerospace, railway and automotive industries
To book your place, please visit www.imeche.org/humanfactors.