Human Factors in Transport

This document discusses the role of human factors in transportation accidents, focusing on three news stories. The first story highlights the importance of pilot training and the responsibility of aircraft manufacturers. The second story emphasizes the significance of communication in preventing accidents on waterways. The third story showcases the consequences of drunk driving and the need for responsible behavior. The document emphasizes the importance of training, experience, and adherence to safety regulations in the transportation industry.

Running Head: HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
News Story 1
Pilots were not to blame for 737 crash
The aviation industry provides people with the safest kind of travel as compared to
transportation on land or water. With air traffic constantly being monitored and radars busy
with making sure that the flights sty on their path and fly at a certain height to avoid midair
crashes or any other accident, accidents are very uncommon and rare (Legett, 2019).
However, one must also consider that if there is an accident, survival rate of hundreds of
passengers on board is almost zero.
Despite the high end technologies being used to regulate flights in various countries
and abroad, after making sure international aviation experts work hand in hand to make sure a
flight lands safely after taking off the runway. This brings us to the human factors that
determine how safe a flight is, the operators, the manufacturers of planes, the decision
makers, the ground staff, the cabin crew and most importantly the pilots. The scope of
committing a mistake is very little given the high level of expertise required to control this
industry and mistakes are unaffordable because it will inevitably lead to mass accidents with
a survival rate that is nil.
The flight ET302 went down shortly after takeoff and caused a loss of 157 lives. The
Ethiopian Airlines Flight involved A Max Jet Model which had crashed in October. It was a
Lion Air Flight 610 which took off from Jakarta in Indonesia, with 189 people on board, all
of them perished. The airline’s chief executive said that the pilots were not at fault that leads
to the question, who was?
Human error in this context, although unclear, is being directed towards the Boing
administration. A stakeholder noted “We don’t have to have 300-plus people die every
time to find out that something is unreliable.” On investigation of the black box it was found

2HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
that there was a similarity with the black box of the previous crash which noted a faulty
sensor which caused the fight control system to deploy late unlike what an US congressman
claimed about the pilots being at fault.
The pilots left no scope for errors, according to investigation, they had followed the
procedures perfectly. The control system of the plane was such that it operates under a set of
specific circumstances however, the accident was caused due to the plane control system
which is known as the MCAS countering and overriding the commands of the pilot and
forcing the nose downwards. However, Boeing claims that there are methods of deactivating
the control system to give pilots the control they require in each case, and the pilots need to
be informed of the same beforehand.
The human factor that was responsible for the crash was the administration of Boeing
for not passing over enough information to the pilots about the steps that need to be taken to
override the systems (Belcastro & Foster, 2010). However, they have not yet grounded the
flights with the same system. What good is a system if it has to be disabled? The blame is on
Boeing that despite the previous plane crash at Jakarta, no step was taken to ensure it does not
happen again.
The Boeing Chief communicated that, "Clearly, we can make improvements, and we
understand that and we will make those improvements." After grounding the model and
hopes that 737 Max will return to service soon. The human factor in this case was that of
human error. Sanders and McCormick (1993) provide a system-oriented definition of human
error: an inappropriate or undesirable human decision or behavior that reduces, or has the
potential for reducing, effectiveness, safety, or system performance.

3HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
News Story 2
More bodies found as Budapest tour boat salvage work begins
On 11th June, a ‘The Mermaid’, a tour boat sank in the Danube, at Budapest. After
spotting debris, work began to help salvage the bodies of the victims of the tour boat
accident. 19 South Korean Tourists along with a certain Hungarian crew member was found
dead, eight were missing (the Guardian, 2019). This happened when the boat collided with a
cruise ship on the river.
The human factor that caused this problem was pure lack of communication. Human
communication is integral to any work that needs to be done. The officials of the tour boat
was informed about the cruise on the same course however the news went unheeded. This
reminiscent of the drowning of RMS Titanic that happened when the warning about icebergs
was ignored and the ship hit an iceberg and sunk claiming hundreds of lives.
The waterway on the Danube is usually crowded because of countless boats and ships.
In such a highly crammed area it is imperative that people take into consideration that
accidents might happen, when two vessels cross each other. Accidents on rivers or oceans
usually have very little survival rate because most victims end up drowning or wash away in
the flow. Had they paid heed to the communication the accident would not have happened
(Toffoli et al., 2005).
Communication is not only integral in waterways, it is integral in all kinds of
transportation. The roads and paths might have various barriers to overcome. On land, even
an overtake can prove to be fatal hence it is important that then drivers are calculative and
confident about what they are doing. Circumstances were such that they cause a chain of
unfortunate events that leads to risky situations.

4HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
Salas, Dickinson, Converse, and Tannenbaum (1992) defined a team as “a
distinguishable set of two or more people who interact, dynamically, interdependently, and
adaptively toward a common and valued goal/objective/mission, who each have been
assigned specific roles or functions to perform, and who have a limited life-span of
membership” (p.4). For transportation service providers’ teamwork in necessary and it was
because of the lack of the same that the accident happened.
To err is human. And human mistakes unfortunately lead to disasters that ruin
countless human lives. Transportation is something everyone has to avail at various places
and the riders are rarely aware of the circumstances that might happen because they are not
responsible for that part. Thus the lives of others rest on hands that take the wheel and help
people reach places. Thus, it is very important that they take warnings seriously. Even little
bit of risk might inevitably harm the live of the people on board. Risk taking is not
appreciated in the industry.
Behavior is relative when working with human factors. People might be extremely
careful to the point their speed is looked down upon and people who are risk taking might
cause harm. Transportation thus requires a lot of training and experience which will help
people understand the various scenarios that might arise and take correct measures for each of
them.
News Story 3
Jacqui Saburido, who became the face of an anti-drunk driving campaign, has
died
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage commission released the news of the death of Jacqui
Saburido who was disfigured in a car crash which horrifically burned her in 1999, due to

5HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
cancer (Keith Allen, 2019). She was a survivor and an activist who campaigned vehemently
against drunk driving. She was the face of what drunk driving could cause.
On the way back home from a birthday party, the car she was in was hit by a pickup
truck that was being driven by a drunk man, Reginald Stephey. She was the one survivor who
was stick while the car burned. When she was cut out, it was realized that 60% of her was
burnt and they were all third degree burns. She had almost no chance of survival but she
somehow made it.
He face was never repaired and it was painful to witness. She was suffering for
someone else’s mistake of drunk driving. She even allowed people to use extremely graphic
photographs of her after the accident to let the world know what drunk driving had caused.
She took her pain and turned it into a chance to show the world what it was capable of doing
to completely normal lives.
Drinking causes the nervous system to relax. This reduces cooperation within the
various sensory nerves, which is very dangerous for actions that require a lot of concentration
and the attention of the drivers. Consistent with Steinberg’s (2010) dual system model,
sensation-seeking and impulsiveness have been among the personality dimensions that have
demonstrated the most consistent relationships with risky driving. Sensation seeking is a
tendency to seek new, different, and intense sensations and experiences, and has four
subscales including Thrill and Adventure Seeking. Hatfield, Fernandes and Job (2014)
Driving is not for thrill unless it is in sport hence one must be in complete sense of
doing so. There are countless laws all over the world that tries to limit the same. Heavy fine is
levied on people who the same (Jacobs, 1989). This also happens by people who use drugs
during driving. Marijuana and other drugs tend to incite hallucinations and sleep which is
dangerous. There has been violent accidents due to people falling asleep at the wheel.

6HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
Substance abuse helps people undertake risky behavior and thrills. Speeding and
drifting cause accidents on racetrack as well, let alone commercial roads. "Even if it means
sitting here in front of a camera with no ears, no nose, no eyebrows, no hair, I'll do this a
thousand times if it will help someone make a wise decision." As a survivor she knows that
dying is one thing but surviving with countless burns is quite the other. She had to face
various stigmas.
BAC or Blood alcohol levels are checked in humans to make sure that the factor can
drive (Dawson & Reid, 1997). Drunk driving crashes incur enormous economic costs, like
lost productivity, legal expenses, workplace losses, emergency medical costs and medical
services, insurance, damage of both private and public property and congestion.
Even two beers can make a person drunk enough to cause harm like the arrest of the
man called Duncan Smith, who crashed into a fire hydrant. However, he was driving slowly
and hence the damage was little and he walked away unscathed. He had to undergo fines and
field sobriety tests to make sure he was fit to go home. High levels of blood alcohol in
someone will inevitably lead to arrest.
Human factors need to make sure that do not drink and drive because they might hit
anyone else and they might suffer their entire lives because of someone being inconsiderate
and risk seeking. It is also incredibly foolish.

7HUMAN FACTORS IN TRANSPORT
References
Belcastro, C., & Foster, J. (2010, August). Aircraft loss-of-control accident analysis. In AIAA
Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference (p. 8004).
Dawson, D., & Reid, K. (1997). Fatigue, alcohol and performance
impairment. Nature, 388(6639), 235.
Jacobs, J. B. (1989). Drunk Driving: An American Dilemma. University of Chicago Press.
Keith Allen, C. (2019). Jacqui Saburido, who became the face of an anti-drunk driving
campaign, has died. CNN. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/23/us/jacqui-
saburido-drunk-driving-dead-trnd/index.html [Accessed 21 Jun. 2019].
Legett, T. (2019). 'Pilots were not to blame for 737 crash'. BBC News. Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48528383 [Accessed 21 Jun. 2019].
the Guardian. (2019). More bodies found as Budapest tour boat salvage work begins.
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/11/more-bodies-found-as-
budapest-tour-boat-salvage-work-begins [Accessed 21 Jun. 2019].
Toffoli, A., Lefevre, J. M., Bitner-Gregersen, E., & Monbaliu, J. (2005). Towards the
identification of warning criteria: analysis of a ship accident database. Applied Ocean
Research, 27(6), 281-291.