Comments in ‘on the road’

[thirdcrank]

There are currently at least two active threads about moderation. I think it's on the other that somebody posted that nobody likes being moderated and that sums it up for me. And it includes me.

Beyond that, I cannot see any result but "Like it or lump it."

[Phil Fouracre]

All I was trying to ask was about the closing down of discussion about something that could be of benefit to others, ie the importance of maintaining your bike!

Amongst the other stuff... did you get the information that you were seeking?

Jonathan

Sadly no! I think that it was you who replied to my paragliding comparison re; safety, and you mentioned airline safety and medical research! Both posts disappeared!?
I’m loathe to criticise mods, it must be a thankless task, but, where do you ‘draw the line’? In a case like this, where someone pays the ultimate price for the sake of a couple of pairs of pads and ten minutes!! I’m really not being callous, but, I think that it is of huge general benefit to inform people in this situation.
Just as an aside, if anyone still thinks I’m being insensitive, I had a catastrophic flying accident a few years ago - only here because of the very efficient Air Sea Rescue and surgeons in Frenchay. We have spent endless hours analysing every aspect of this to try and learn from/teach others - so I can ‘talk from experience’!

[Cyril Haearn]

I for one should like to read more about that

[Jdsk]

Thanks, Phil.

It was me: how safety initiatives in medicine have followed the example of commercial aviation.

The ability to learn from others is so important... and possibly a key step in human evolution.

Jonathan

[Phil Fouracre]

Cyril - no you wouldn’t! too messy, even if you have eaten!

Jonathan - similar to skeletal trauma and lightweight plaster casts, from the troubles in Northern Ireland! Common good versus personal trauma? An interesting trade off?

[Jdsk]

You've lost me there, Phil...

Jonathan

[Phil Fouracre]

You've lost me there, Phil...

Jonathan

Apologies, wandering off a little! Basically, traumatic injuries caused by bombs and bullets encouraged a reassessment of the treatment of skeletal injuries.....

[Jdsk]

Thanks.

Definitely. In the UK we recently saw that with so many healthy young men injured by explosive devices. And both the medical care and the medical technology improved very rapidly in response.

The best studied cases are the US in the Vietnam invasion and Israel in the serial post-independence conflicts. But the former wasn't only about improvements: there was also a relearning of what had been known and forgotten.

...

But the analogy between safety in medicine and safety in commercial aviation isn't mainly about that. It's about ways of thinking such as Total Quality Management and procedural stuff such as anonymous reporting and analysing every errors rather than any specific technology.

Was it you that suggested that serious failures in commercial aviation were now predominantly human rather than technological?

Jonathan

[Phil Fouracre]

Thanks.

Definitely. In the UK we recently saw that with so many healthy young men injured by explosive devices. And both the medical care and the medical technology improved very rapidly in response.

The best studied cases are the US in the Vietnam invasion and Israel in the serial post-independence conflicts. But the former wasn't only about improvements: there was also a relearning of what had been known and forgotten.

...

But the analogy between safety in medicine and safety in commercial aviation isn't mainly about that. It's about ways of thinking such as Total Quality Management and procedural stuff such as anonymous reporting and analysing every errors rather than any specific technology.

Was it you that suggested that serious failures in commercial aviation were now predominantly human rather than technological?

Jonathan

I can’t take credit for that! (Post also deleted!) But, as with the original post subject matter, it is the human input that is the weak point!

[Jdsk]

Plenty of human errors in medicine but it's way behind commercial aviation in reengineering the processes and using appropriate technology and recording and analysed what happened, so you still get errors at every level!

There was a flurry of partnering with F1 teams, especially around front-door and surgical processes. But it didn't go mainstream, probably because of the inherent variation in the starting point. (OTOH last week's pitstop is well worth studying!)

Jonathan

[reohn2]

..........it is the human input that is the weak point!

Quite right.
One only need observe objectively safety critical practice to see the human being is his/her own worst enemy where minimising risk is involved or risking the lives and limbs of others to save or make a few £'s.
Grenfell anyone?
And there are many,many other examples to choose from

[Jdsk]

There's a catch there. The best way to reduce human errors may be procedural or technological.

The happens with Lean methodology: if a step is removed completely then there is no possibility of human error within that step.

In commercial aviation we now know a lot about design of instruments that are less prone to human error in reading.

And in medicine there's a whole collection of human errors for which the best intervention is the introduction of autoidentification technology.

Jonathan