*** TIPS on TUESDAY *** Avoidable Accidents 1 - Out of sight... ...out of mind! Take a look at the two still photos weve clipped from a video and wince. Then ask just how many times youve seen someone do this when leaving or joining a dual carriageway. The car comes from the far left lane and cuts through both the centre and inside lane and only becomes aware of the queuing traffic on the slip road itself at the very last second. The driver cant brake and is unable to swerve, hits the corner of the truck and is spun back into the path of the lorry with the dashcam. The results are not pretty. Did the driver not see the signs for the exit in time? As well as the overhead sign at the junction itself which should be clearly visible from all three lanes, theres are two other signs on the right (ie on the verge). One is at 800m from the exit and the second at 400m, and whilst its possible that the driver missed both of these because he was passing trucks on the wrong side - one thing the video does show is that its a busy stretch of road with a lot of wagons - wed have to say its unlikely. It does look far more like a premeditated move as he swung right from the outside lane. Predictable? Of course. Vehicles sometimes queue on slip roads, particularly at busy times. Avoidable? Certainly. All he had to do was not move over to the left before the slip road started and keep a good distance back from any wide vehicle to make sure he could see past whatever he was following into the slip road. There two reasons for this collision. The first is obvious - impatience and trying to get a few seconds further up the queue. Quite astonishingly someone else does exactly the same thing just a second or two after the collision. But the second is a lack of awareness of the potential of this manoeuvre to go very wrong. And yet again, the reason is less the carelessness we all love to blame in others (whilst pretending wed do better) and more to do with the tricks our brain plays on us. Lets introduce Daniel Kahneman, PhD, the psychologist who has spent decades investigating human thought processes. Kahneman has described how what he calls our System 1 - our automatic, intuitive, very quick mind - usually lets us navigate the world easily and successfully. System 1 should be checked by System 2 - our deliberative, analytical and very slow mind - but when we begin to think were experts at what were doing, System 2 mostly endorses and generates actions from System 1. And this is where things begin to break down. System 1 also leads us to make regular, predictable errors in judgment. Kahneman said in an interview on the apa.org website: System 1 is a storyteller. It tells the best stories that it can from the information available, even when the information is sparse or unreliable. And that makes stories that are based on very different qualities of evidence equally compelling. Our measure of how good a story is - how confident we are in its accuracy - is not an evaluation of the reliability of the evidence and its quality, its a measure of the coherence of the story. Kahneman calls this story what you see is all there is. People are designed to tell the best story possible. So WYSIATI means that we use the information we have as if it is the only information. We dont spend much time saying, Well, there is much we dont know. We make do with what we do know. And that concept is very central to the functioning of our mind. Asked if someone can train themselves to ask what other information is out there thats being missed, Kahneman continues: Well, the main point that I make is that confidence is a feeling, it is not a judgment. And that feeling comes automatically; it itself is a product of System 1. My own intuition and my System 1 have really not been educated to be very different. Education influences System 2, and enables System 2 to pick up cues that this is a situation where Im likely to make those mistakes. So on rare occasions, I catch myself in the act of making a mistake, but normally I just go on and make it. When the stakes are very high, I might stop myself. For example, when someone asks me for an opinion and Im in a professional role, and I know that they are going to act on my opinion or take it very seriously, then I slow down. But I make very rash judgments all the time. I will make a long-term political prediction, then a little voice will remind me, but youve written that long-term political predictions are nonsensical. But you know, Ill just go on making it, because it seems true and real at the time Im making it. And thats the WYSIATI part of it. I cant see why it wouldnt be true. Interestingly Kahneman then gives an example of how to use group think in an an organisational situation, based on a the work of another psychologist Gary Klein who came up with the idea of a premortem: To use the [premortem] method, an organization would gather its team before making a final decision on an important matter. Then, all the team members are asked to imagine that the decision led to disastrous failure, and to write up why it was a disaster. The method allows people to overcome groupthink by giving them permission to search for potential problems they might be overlooking. If youve been on this page long enough, you should see instant parallels between a premortem and our own thinking where weve talked about planning for disaster. We firmly believe that the advice in Roadcraft and other books to consider what you can see, what you cannot see, what you can reasonably expect to happen is totally inadequate, particularly when combined with the natural tendency to look for evidence supporting what we want to do rather than seek reasons we shouldnt do something - just think how much advanced training is about looking for opportunities. How do we reach this conclusion? Look at that statement what you can reasonably expect to happen. If you accept Kahnemans theories, you should see straight away that what you can reasonably expect to happen is liable to be a product of our System 1 and the danger is that it will lead us to make the wrong decision because what you can reasonably expect to happen is biased, relying on our intuition based on prior experience, which - unless we have local knowledge to the contrary - is almost certainly that there wont be a queue you cant see in the slip road. Look again at the first photo, and consider it in terms of what you see is all there is. From the drivers perspective, theres no queue. He then let System 1 make the decision to swing into the slip road and that was why the driver didnt consider the possibility of a queue - he relied on the faulty analysis of the situation by System 1, which in turn was based on WYSIATI and no visible queue, plus the likelihood hed done exactly the same in the past and been successful. For each and every manoeuvre, we need to run our own premortem - or as weve put it in the past, to consider not just whats reasonable, but the worst case scenario. If we cant see into an area of road were about to use, whats the worst case scenario? A stationary vehicle has to count pretty high, doesnt it. This isnt just the kind of daft stunt that careless drivers make - its something we see riders doing all the time. If hitting the stationary truck werent good for a car, imagine the consequences of being flung back into the path of the moving lorry wearing only your bike kit. Lights out. Permanently. So remember, if something looks like a good idea, thats your System 1 talking. Just take a moment and ask if its really so great - let your System 2 take a shot at analysing the data. It may take a little longer to get the desired result and you may miss a few opportunities. But youll avoid a lot of nasty surprises. And No Surprise? No Accident.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 10:45:00 +0000
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