This paper was published in IRSE NEWS October 2017. It is is based on a paper presented to the IRSE Irish Section after their Annual General Meeting on 1 March 2017, at the Northern Ireland Railways signalling department’s offices in Belfast.

Human factors is the study of the interactions between the human, the task, the equipment and the environment to achieve the desired result. The paper offers an analysis of the application of human factors in the transport sector, comparing aviation, road and rail in particular. The general conclusion to emerge is that whilst technology and automation is generally good, it brings pitfalls and new risks that need to be understood and managed.

"Like all transport undertakings, railways are in the safety and risk business and unfortunately, NIR had a number of accidents and incidents, it was my duty to assist the enquiry panels investigating them. During this time, I began to get interested in the theory of accidents and the concept of human factors – which was a fairly new area of study stimulated in its growth by the frequency and severity of railway accidents in the UK during the 80s and 90s and by a number of aircraft accidents in that period – and sadly ever since."

"We ought to be concerned that the world of transport has exhausted the advances by the technology of fly-by-wire or TPWS (the UK’s train protection warning system) and safety management strategies such as SPAD awareness campaigns, and as safety professionals we need to keep the systems for which we are responsible under review and we need new ideas. In UK railways, there has been a steady reduction in SPAD numbers between 2002 and 2009 but improvement seems to have stopped and numbers are rising again."