COLUMN | Battling boredom on the bridge and avoiding mishaps at sea [Grey Power]

“Humans do not make good monitors,” observed the Chief Inspector of the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch in his foreword to the organisation’s annual report.

Expanding this uncontroversial notion, he goes on to point out that if people are under-stimulated, "they will find other things to occupy them,” further noting that they may well be, “reluctant to utilise system functions that will alert them to impending problems.”

Recent months, as the report emphasises, have demonstrated plenty of evidence that backs up these assertions, with a slew of exceedingly nasty collisions and groundings in which the faltering attention of watchkeepers, preoccupied or in the arms of Morpheus, have been contributors.

Fatigue, failure to employ additional eyes and wilfully turning off alarm systems also feature, but this matter of a lack of stimulation once again raises its ugly head as a problem that will just not go away.

All forms of transport are suffering from this problem of automation taking over from the human brain. Think about the nonsense of top of the range cars with the driver having to do almost nothing except to stay awake and sufficiently alert to seize back control in the event of something untoward happening.

Consider those reports of cabin crew visiting the cockpit of long-haul airliners, to find both pilots asleep, or of train drivers, whose sole remaining responsibility is to open and close the doors, becoming completely detached from their driving duties and prone to ignore emergencies when they occasionally happened.

It was very many years ago that I went on a press trip to inspect what was advertised as the first “integrated navigation system” in which navigation and anti-collision functions were combined in sort of console that would have looked perfectly at home in the starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame.

The chief salesman of the manufacturer that had devised this equipment and installed it on a Channel ferry happened to be an old shipmate, so it was a very cheerful and enlightening experience, with this versatile system overcoming every challenge with which it was presented.

It was very impressive, my old friend concluding his demonstration with the assertion that the INS, “would make even the most mediocre navigator into a Vasco de Gama.”

Being something of a Luddite, I remember writing that while there was no denying the versatility of this gear, it was "de-skilling" the navigators and treating them as idiots. And if you do this, I recall saying, only idiots will want the job.

We remained good friends, but correspondence in this vein remained for some years, renewed with each exciting iteration of the bridge equipment as it appeared. Eventually we got bored, and desisted.

And it is boredom, which is a consequence of being reduced to monitoring a lot of clever equipment, rather than actively participating in a challenging task of navigation and collision avoidance, that has been a major contributor to so many accidents.

As Chief Inspector Andrew Moll noted in more precise terms, the Devil makes work for idle hands and his organisation (and other investigators the world over) have found watchkeepers distracted by mobile phones, tablets, bureaucratic tasks, films on laptops and other devices that have kept their brains and eyes away from their primary role, at the crucial moment.

The clever equipment manufacturers, rather than restoring an element of skill and challenge to the business of navigation, have continued to make their stuff even more versatile.

If the users are getting bored with mere monitoring, they say, we can monitor the monitors with movement sensors or alarm systems, even installing surveillance equipment that will activate if it detects the bored watchkeeper’s eyes might be momentarily closing.

I remember reading of a suggestion that increasingly powerful electric shocks might be employed to startle the dozing officer out of his catatonic trance. I think that was a joke, at least I hope it was.

Some suggest that we are now on the cusp of complete automation, with humans taken out of the loop entirely, except in some perhaps, remote, or emergency-only function.

It might be observed that this is behind the inordinate amount of activity at IMO around the topic of devising the environment for fully-automated ships, solving the manning crisis at the same time as the problem of bored watchkeepers. I’m afraid this Luddite believes that giving those idle hands something more interesting to do would be a more civilised and safer option.