A recent Telegraph article, quite rightly, points out the similarities between the Deep Water Horizon and Chernobyl disasters in that both resulted from a string of human errors - and, to some extent inexplicable ones at that. The article suggests that over-confidence is a root cause of these skilled operators taking plainly stupid decisions - and even quotes my old colleague Brian Edmondson's summing up of Chernobyl: the operators had lost their fear of the reactor.
We all do this to a greater or lesser extent. I have been guilty of ignoring warning lights in my car because of false alarms in the past and because I have it properly maintained, don't I. Why am I so confident that it's the warning system that's at fault and not the car engine or brakes or whatever? It's something to do with that "It won't happen to me" syndrome.
How one manages to avoid such errors in big systems such as Deep Water Horizon is a difficult question. Perhaps we should not rely on the long-term expert but always have someone on the steep part of the learing curve in charge - always retain the fear factor. Any good industrial psychologists out there?
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