Clear Prop!: Whatever Happened to Situational Awareness?

I've noticed something lately, and I'm wondering whether other people have noticed it too. People seem to be moving through the world without looking.

I've watched pedestrians step into a street without looking either way. I've had cars pull out from side streets directly in front of me, forcing me to brake abruptly. On more than one occasion I've been watching the driver closely enough to see that his or her head never turned. No glance left. No glance right. Just — go.

Maybe I've become unusually sensitive to it. My background in aviation probably has something to do with that.

In aviation, Situational awareness can be a matter of life and death.

It starts before the airplane ever leaves the ground.

Before starting an aircraft engine, you don't simply turn the key or push a button. You look around. You make sure nobody is near the propeller. And you call out:

"CLEAR PROP!"

Why? Because you are responsible for knowing what is happening around you before you act. Is there a person nearby who could be terribly injured by a propeller that has suddenly started spinning. Think that's impossible? I knew somebody many years ago that it happened to. And that habit continues throughout a flight. Where am I? Where is the terrain? Where is the weather? Where is the traffic? What is the airplane doing? What might happen next? A good pilot isn't merely looking. A good pilot is continually building and updating a mental picture of the world around the airplane.

That's situational awareness.

And I'm beginning to wonder whether we need a lot more of it on the ground.

Looking Without Seeing

There's actually a fascinating body of research about this.

Researchers studying traffic accidents use the expression "looked but failed to see." LBFTS.

It describes something most of us would find difficult to believe until we understand how human attention works: A driver can look toward something and still fail to consciously register it.

The eyes received the information.

The brain didn't process its significance.

That distinction matters.

We tend to think of vision almost like a video camera: if our eyes are pointed at something, surely we've seen it. But that's not how human perception works. Our brains select, filter, anticipate and discard enormous amounts of information.

That's normally very useful. Until the thing our brain fails to notice is a motorcycle. Or a pedestrian. Or another car.

https://youtu.be/N7x9DHgtXWQ

At 1.56 into the video, I give Miles O'Brien a quick 'lesson' in how a USAF-CAP Mission Observer is taught to scan the terrain for a missing aircraft.

Seeing Takes Work

I learned this lesson quite literally when I served as a Mission Observer with the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary, Civil Air Patrol.

One of an Observer's jobs is searching from the air for missing or crashed aircraft. You might imagine that this consists mostly of simply looking out the window at the terrain below.

It doesn't. We were taught—and I later taught Observer trainees—that seeing requires a deliberate technique.

Although a huge landscape may appear to be spread out before you, the area in which you can actually see useful detail at any instant is surprisingly small—roughly the area covered by your fist held out in front of you. So you learn to scan.

Your eyes follow a systematic path across the terrain rather than wandering randomly. But there's another important part of the technique: you periodically stop the scan.

For a moment, you fix your attention on one small piece of terrain.

And you really look.

Is that just a patch of light-colored rock—or part of an airplane?

Is that a shadow—or something that doesn't belong there?

Is there a straight line, an unnatural shape, a glint of reflected sunlight, or a bit of color that shouldn't be in that landscape?

Only then do you move on and continue the scan.

That experience taught me something I've never forgotten: Looking is something your eyes do. Seeing requires your attention.

And perhaps that's part of what I'm noticing on our streets today. A driver can glance toward an intersection without really seeing the car that's coming. A pedestrian can face the roadway without registering the vehicle approaching from the left. The eyes may have pointed in the right direction. But nobody stopped the scan long enough to actually see.

And Then There Are the Phones

Of course, today we've added another enormous complication. We carry little machines specifically engineered to capture our attention. We walk while reading messages. We drive while talking. We listen to podcasts. We follow GPS instructions. We think about the email we just received or the appointment we're late for.

Sometimes our eyes are distracted. But perhaps more importantly, our minds are distracted. You don't have to be staring at a phone to be somewhere other than where you actually are. And that's what concerns me.

The pedestrian stepping off the curb may physically be at the intersection while mentally still participating in a conversation. The driver pulling out of the side street may be looking through the windshield without really constructing a picture of the traffic approaching from either direction.

They're present.

But not entirely there.

Aviation Learned This Lesson the Hard Way

Aviation has spent decades developing procedures to compensate for the fact that human beings are fallible.

Pilots use checklists.

Scan instruments.

Make traffic calls.

Deliberately look outside.

Repeat information back ... correctly.

Challenge assumptions.

And are trained to keep asking, consciously or unconsciously:

What is happening around me right now—and what is likely to happen next?

That's a habit worth carrying out of the cockpit.

Driving a car doesn't require a pilot's license. Neither does crossing a street.

But both involve moving through an environment shared with other people, where a few seconds of inattention can have irreversible consequences.

Perhaps we need to relearn something aviation has understood for a very long time:

Don't just look. See.

Before stepping into the street, stop and actually look both ways.

Before pulling onto a road, turn your head and see what's coming.

Before backing out of a parking space, know what's behind you. Employ something pilots refer to as 'sterile cockpit'. Turn off the radio. Pause conversations. Until you are safely backed out of the parking space.

And every now and then, put the phone away and notice where you actually are.

Situational awareness sounds like an aviation term.

It shouldn't be.

It's a life skill.

And perhaps we could all use a little more of it.

Clear prop!