Health & Safety -

Health & Safety

It appears that distraction is very much a Health & Safety at work issue. Quoting from a recent Times article

Pilots of a Northwest Airlines jetliner that overshot its destination by 240km (150 miles) last week told US investigators they became distracted during an extended discussion of crew scheduling that included their use of personal laptops, officials said yesterday.

“The pilots said there was a concentrated period of discussion where they did not monitor the plane or calls from [air-traffic controllers] even though both stated they heard conversation on the radio,” the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said after interviewing the pair.

“Both said they lost track of time,” the safety board said in a report on their investigation …

Whilst we’re not all pilots and we’re not all in charge of critical machines, I wonder how often is plain distraction, a cause of accidents at work?