Blame the human

I have often said that definition of “human element” needs to be broadened to be both accurate and useful in the improvement of marine safety. 

The human element label is often used as a convenient way to point the post-incident finger primarily at a hapless vessel captain, mate or engineer. This permits the industry and regulators to avoid having to face the deeper root causes of marine casualties. This psychological barrier allows the bigger systemic problems to remain in place while the easy targets once again take the hit. Thus, the problems remain unresolved.

So just how broad am I talking about? Well, very broad. I believe that a strong case can be made for defining virtually all failures and casualties that aren’t the direct result of a truly unforeseeable and verifiable act of nature as having a human-element origin.

In 2003, for instance, when managers ignored multiple warnings from their captains and let an incompetent mate operate a tug, it resulted in a big oil spill in Buzzards Bay, Mass., and record fines. Remember the tug Evening Tide anyone? Obviously, the navigation failure by the tug mate fell into the human-element category. But what about the company managers that casually allowed the accident to occur?

Following that same line of reasoning, it’s also a human-element failure when manning and watch-schedule standards that are well known to directly result in fatigue and poor health (which then lead to avoidable “accidents”) are allowed to persist while politicians dither, regulators wring their hands, and the industry pretends there isn’t a problem. This head-in-the-sand approach is as human as it gets.

Once the larger concept is accepted, we can, and should, dig deeper. Subcategorizing events and contributing causes to further refine efforts at prevention and response is absolutely necessary. But all humans, regardless of their place in the food chain, are subject to failings of one sort or another and by extension almost all accidents are caused by the human element. It’s really just a matter of which flavor.