safety

The Human Factors of Weapons

July 16, 2010

James R. in California sends along a tragic story of police officer confusing his taser with his firearm.  The news story can be found here.  Here’s what James says: Here in CA there is a big to do over the shooting death of a young man (Oscar Grant) by a BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.  Apparently, Mr. Grant was being [...]

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Mining Tragedy Update

July 15, 2010
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There is new information on the West Virginia coal mine tragedy where the methane detectors were disabled to prevent automatic shut down of the machinery. This comes from NPR: Methane monitors are mounted on the massive, 30-foot-long continuous miners because explosive gas can collect in pockets near the roofs of mines. Methane can be released as the machine cuts into [...]

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Human Factors and Health care: Tackling Inefficiencies

July 12, 2010
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I came across two examples of human factors angles in health care. The first is from the NPR show Planet Money.  The show focuses on how much inefficiency and waste there is in medical billing. The whole podcast is worth listening to, but there is one bit that made me laugh out loud (fast-forward to 10:35). Codes (NDC number) are [...]

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Glass Shower Doors

June 28, 2010
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I found this story about shattering shower doors first on The Consumerist blog and then the original by the author, Bob Sullivan at MSNBC (quoted below). I had just finished showering and turned off the water. Soaking wet, I did what millions of Americans do every day — I reached for my snazzy sliding glass shower door. Seconds later, glass was raining [...]

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The Human Factors of Rock Climbing – A matter of life and death

June 25, 2010
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A tragedy occurred last week in West Virginia where a rock climber died apparently due to a human factors issue with her gear. This text comes from a commenter on Rockclimbing.com: The climber was Karen Feher from Midlothian Va. She climbed to the anchor of Rico Suave and clipped in direct. Her setup: She had two thin dyneema slings girth [...]

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Contact lens solution safety can be a complex if-then task

June 9, 2010
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We’ve posted before on confusing bottles, even those with labels. This latest problem comes from a type of contact lens solution that burns your eyes if you use it immediately, but does not if you’ve let your contacts sit in it for a long period of time. Excerpts from the write up at Consumer Reports: It is a hydrogen peroxide solution [...]

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Stirring the pot… with a saw

March 22, 2010

If you’ve seen video of the SawStop, you remember it. A table saw spinning at full power that can stop and drop away if it comes in contact with a finger. If you haven’t seen the video, I suggest a watch. Clearly, the SawStop comes in above warnings in the hierarchy of hazards. Design out (hard to do with a [...]

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“Sully” Sullenberger to Speak at the HFES 2010 Conference

March 17, 2010
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I received word today that Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger will give the keynote address at the 2010 Human Factors and Ergonomics Conference in San Francisco this October. Not only am I excited to hear him speak, I am excited because he is the perfect choice for a Human Factors audience: he has spoken publicly on interface and instruction issues in [...]

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Exit Signs Across Cultures

March 11, 2010
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Slate.com has a nice article on the difference between U.S. exit signs and the rest of the world, as well as a nice history of the evolution of the symbols.  Here is an excerpt to get you interested: The text-based American exit sign has its origins in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, a blaze in a downtown Manhattan garment factory [...]

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Redesigning Toyota’s Keyless Ignition System

February 10, 2010
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The LA Times reporters Ken Bensinger and Ralph Vartabedian recently wrote a story about keyless ignition systems and the associated HF issues (we blogged about it here).  In a follow-up story, they report that Toyota is considering redesigning the system so that instead of requiring a single 3-second press to shut off the engine, it now requires 3 consecutive presses.  [...]

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Visual Search and Airport Security Screening

February 8, 2010
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Funny I should have mentioned conjunction search the other day, since this post is all about new research by Jeremy Wolfe who has and continues to contribute to the visual search literature. In this new work, already mentioned on i09, Wolfe and his former research assistant Michael van Wert investigated complex visual search as it applies to baggage scanning at [...]

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Keyless Ignition in Emergencies: Do you know what to do?

January 27, 2010
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This story in the LA Times illustrates several important HF/usability issues.  First, the  importance of knowing what the user knows before introducing new, seemingly “simple” technology, or changing the way they currently do things (in this case, what people know about ignition systems and how they start their cars).  Second, like the story about the alarms, it also clearly illustrates [...]

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Ahem…your heart has stopped

January 12, 2010
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Darin Ellis sends along this radio story about a woman’s robotic heart that has a malfunction warning system that literally breaks the textbook HF rules of alarm design.  I’ll let Darin explain the unfortunate issue: This woman, who is living thanks to a robotic heart, related a story of the “heart” malfunctioning.  Apparently, although not prone to malfunction, there is [...]

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Publically Available Databases for Research

January 7, 2010
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This is just a placeholder post to collect Anne’s collection of publicly available safety data: Data visualization tools Occupational safety Aviation safety Mining safety

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Distracted Driving: The Experience

January 3, 2010
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We’ve posted quite a bit on driving before, but these new links are too good to be missed. This first video from the NYT goes over the dangers of multi-tasking while driving (including on-the-street interviews of what American’s might think) and ends with an interview with David Strayer of the University of Utah, including a video of his lab simulator [...]

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Database Three: Mining safety data

December 17, 2009
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This post is part of a series on free data available to curious researchers and professionals: Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) This database contains more searching capability than browsing. You need the specific geographic location of a mine before searching (state, county). Once you zero in on a particular mine, the types of reports available are: Overview Inspections Accidents [...]

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