It seems to have taken a very long time, but the concept of “human engineering,” which has struggled for acceptance among those who design equipment for the marine industry, seems to be better understood these days.
It ought to be common sense, but perhaps because the design function is so remote from the eventual operator, there is a basic difficulty of perception that must be overcome, if the equipment is to do its job properly in all circumstances.
Some time ago, the Nautical Institute published an interesting article about the way in which the need for bridge controls to be “intuitive” was sometimes neglected, leading to confusion. There was an interesting illustrated discussion about thruster controls in which the operator was presented with a range of switches to alter the direction of the thruster.
Doubtless one would become quickly accustomed to them, but there was immediate ambiguity in whether, when the switch was turned to “port”, it was the desired direction for the ship to move, or the anticipated direction of the water in the thruster tunnel. It was suggested that the lack of clarity in such labelling, and perhaps in the design of the controls themselves, could contribute to an accident.
There is no getting away from the fact that better designed controls would not have resulted in such problems.
This matter of intuition, or doing what the brain tells you to do, is important. It was explained to me by the analogy of riding a bicycle and the immediate disaster that will occur, if, when doing so, you cross your hands.
A ferry master friend told me of his near disaster when he decided, on the wing of his bridge when berthing, rather than peering over his shoulder when backing into the berth, he would stand forward of the controls and promptly forgot what way the combinator control should be moved. He immediately realised what he had done and never did it again.
How often do we read of accidents occurring when, in the heat of the moment, usually when the ship is approaching the berth and seconds count, it is discovered that the switchover from one set of manoeuvring controls to another has been forgotten about and the unit being used is found to be inoperative?
There is a long list of bashed bows and squashed linkspans down the years. Just this week a US National Transportation Safety Board report was noting the last-minute confusion on the bridge of a fast ferry docking in New York, when a switchover failure caused the ship to crash into the dock and injure several passengers.
As always with this excellent US accident investigator, the report went rather deeper than the simple sequence of events and suggested that the actual controls were over-complicated, required extensive operator training, with a lot of identical push-buttons, giving no indications of levels of importance to the operator in showing whether that set of controls was “live”.
Of course, you can usually argue that better trained or experienced operators would have known how to react appropriately and would not have forgotten the switchover, so the “crew negligence” lights flash in the owner’s mind, but there is no getting away from the fact that better designed controls would not have resulted in such problems.
Perhaps ergonomics, human engineering, and the importance of intuitive controls ought to be given more prominence down where they design things.
And with digitisation, touch-screen controls and all the lovely complexities introduced by clever designers, is there any confidence that errors can be more difficult to make? You would like to think so, but it is well beyond my pay grade.
Another repetitive accident that stubbornly will not go away, is the difficulties people still get into when switching from manual to automatic steering. It was a long time ago, but I remember as a junior apprentice, getting shouted at for fumbling around in the dark trying to disengage the “iron mike” to hand steering.
Exactly the same sixty seconds confusion was identified in the grisly last few minutes, before the Torrey Canyon disaster ushered in the age of the superspill in 1967. It was identified as a contributor to the stranding of Exxon Valdez while, although still to be confirmed, confusion over the switch from auto to hand steering appears to have been a factor in the loss of the Royal New Zealand Navy survey ship Manawanui off Western Samoa just last October.
In so many of these cases, it is easy to invoke the simple “human error” conclusion, but perhaps ergonomics, human engineering, and the importance of intuitive controls ought to be given more prominence down where they design things.