Marvin J. Dainoff

On-Board Safety Monitoring Systems for Driving: Review, Knowledge Gaps, and Framework

INTRODUCTION Fatal highway incidents remain the leading type of fatal work-related event, carrying tremendous personal, social, and economic costs. While employers with a fixed worksite can observe and interact directly with workers in an effort to promote safety and reduce risk, employers with workers who operate a motor vehicle as part of their job have fewer options. New technologies such as on-board safety monitoring systems offer the potential to further improve safety. These technologies allow vehicle owners to collect safety-specific information related to a drivers on-the-road behavior and performance. While many such devices are being developed and implemented in both commercial fleets and private vehicles, the scientific examination of these devices has lagged by comparison. METHOD In the current paper, we: (a) describe the general features and functionality of current generations of on-board monitoring devices and how they might impact various driver behaviors; (b) review the current state of scientific knowledge specific to on-board devices; (c) discuss knowledge gaps and potential areas for future research, borrowing from the related domain of computer-based electronic performance monitoring (EPM); and (d) propose a framework that can be used to explore some of the human-system interactions pertaining to monitoring systems. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY Motor vehicle crashes can carry tremendous costs for employers, in terms of injury, disability, and loss of potentially productive work years. New technologies can offer tremendous benefits in terms of promoting safer on-the-road behaviors.

Striving for safety: communicating and deciding in sociotechnical systems

How do communications and decisions impact the safety of sociotechnical systems? This paper frames this question in the context of a dynamic system of nested sub-systems. Communications are related to the construct of observability (i.e. how components integrate information to assess the state with respect to local and global constraints). Decisions are related to the construct of controllability (i.e. how component sub-systems act to meet local and global safety goals). The safety dynamics of sociotechnical systems are evaluated as a function of the coupling between observability and controllability across multiple closed-loop components. Two very different domains (nuclear power and the limited service food industry) provide examples to illustrate how this framework might be applied. While the dynamical systems framework does not offer simple prescriptions for achieving safety, it does provide guides for exploring specific systems to consider the potential fit between organisational structures and work demands, and for generalising across different systems regarding how safety can be managed. Practitioner Summary: While offering no simple prescriptions about how to achieve safety in sociotechnical systems, this paper develops a theoretical framework based on dynamical systems theory as a practical guide for generalising from basic research to work domains and for generalising across alternative work domains to better understand how patterns of communication and decision-making impact system safety.

Sociotechnical approaches to workplace safety: Research needs and opportunities

The sociotechnical systems perspective offers intriguing and potentially valuable insights into problems associated with workplace safety. While formal sociotechnical systems thinking originated in the 1950s, its application to the analysis and design of sustainable, safe working environments has not been fully developed. To that end, a Hopkinton Conference was organised to review and summarise the state of knowledge in the area and to identify research priorities. A group of 26 international experts produced collaborative articles for this special issue of Ergonomics, and each focused on examining a key conceptual, methodological and/or theoretical issue associated with sociotechnical systems and safety. In this concluding paper, we describe the major conference themes and recommendations. These are organised into six topic areas: (1) Concepts, definitions and frameworks, (2) defining research methodologies, (3) modelling and simulation, (4) communications and decision-making, (5) sociotechnical attributes of safe and unsafe systems and (6) potential future research directions for sociotechnical systems research. Practitioner Summary: Sociotechnical complexity, a characteristic of many contemporary work environments, presents potential safety risks that traditional approaches to workplace safety may not adequately address. In this paper, we summarise the investigations of a group of international researchers into questions associated with the application of sociotechnical systems thinking to improve worker safety.

Examination of comptuer task exposures in radiologists: a work systems approach

Radiologists are intensive computer users as they review and interpret radiological examinations using the Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Since their computer tasks require the prolonged use of pointing devices, a high prevalence of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) is reported. The first phase of this study involved conducting a Cognitive Work Analysis in conjunction with a Participatory Ergonomics approach to perform a total work system analysis. We also conducted an ergonomic survey as well as collected computer use data, specifically for the mouse and keyboard. The goal of the study was to reduce the physical exposures for radiologists. This paper presents Phase I results describing the analyses and redesign process of the radiologists tasks, training design, computer use, and selected survey results.

A sociotechnical systems approach to enhance safety climate in the trucking industry: Results of an in-depth investigation

The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology that extends safety climate beyond an overall score by using the framework of macroergonomics to examine the entire system in a more comprehensive manner. The study is discussed in two papers: one paper describes the study methodology in detail (Murphy, Robertson, Huang, Jeffries, & Dainoff, in press), and the current paper describes the results of the study. Multiple methods were combined to create a systems approach, and those methods include the critical incident technique, contextual inquiries with functional role diagrams, and affinity mapping. Key informants in the trucking industry identified 19 themes that affect safety. The themes ranged from balancing work and family/personal time, the companys policy vs. practice, respecting the job of the driver, and active listening and meaningful feedback. The most prominent themes were related to the workers and their activities; the internal environment, including psychosocial job design elements; and organizational design. Such information can be used to design interventions to change the safety climate of an organization in order to reduce negative safety outcomes.

Future Directions for Sociotechnical Systems and Safety: Outcomes from the 2012 Liberty Mutual Hopkinton Conference

The Sociotechnical Systems (STS) approach has had an enormous influence on both research and practice within occupational safety and has been applied across a range of domains including construction, healthcare, transportation and manufacturing. This panel will discuss the outcomes from a Hopkinton Conference on STS and Safety held at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety in Hopkinton, Massachusetts on October 18-19th 2012. The conference brought together a group of invited international researchers from 20 institutions in order to discuss current and future directions for sociotechnical systems and safety. The panel will focus on summarizing the main outcomes from these discussions, these include new directions for research and practice (Carayon on behalf of Hancock, Leveson, Noy, Sznelwar, van Hootegem and Hettinger); current and future requirements for development of methods and tools within STS and safety (Waterson on behalf of Cooke, Roth, Militello, Robertson and Stanton); the scope for computer-based modeling and simulation of complex sociotechnical systems (Alex Kirlik on behalf of Buckle, Goh and Hettinger); the application of a framework from a dynamical systems framework to the problem of communication and decision-making in complex systems (Dainoff on behalf of Flach, Carroll, Hamilton and Sanderson); and, the identification of the key sociotechnical attributes of safe systems (Kleiner on behalf of DeJoy, Hettinger, Huang and Love).

A comparison of upper body kinematics and muscle activation between sit and stand computer workstation configuration

Very few studies considered the movement constraints imposed by the computer workstation during office computer work. The impact of computer workstation on user’s muscle and joint coordination is not yet understood. This study examined three workstation configurations (sitting and standing with elbow desk height, and sitting with elevated desk) and analyzed their corresponding posture, muscle effort and inter-joint and muscle coordination. We found that sitting computer workstation with an elevated desk associated with more non-neutral postures and increased muscle load, particularly on the shoulders. Properly set up sitting and standing workstations resulted in similar median values for postures and muscle loads, but standing workstation allowed for greater muscle dynamic ranges and could be beneficial for short duration mouse tasks. Identifying effects of non-optimal configurations can lead to interventions to help decrease risks of developing musculoskeletal disorders.

A sociotechnical approach to occupational safety

We present an integrated conceptual framework for improving occupational safety. This framework is based on sociotechnical principles and is based on the premise that occupational safety should not be an isolated function but rather seen as directly related to an organizational mission which combines performance and well-being. As such, a fundamental goal is to achieve joint optimization between social and technical components of the system. This framework consists of four basic questions: (1) How can we determine the overall level of safety in the system? (2) How can we determine what kinds of interventions would improve safety? (3) How can we determine if the organization is ready to implement safety interventions? (4) How can we determine the best pathway for implementing safety interventions? A sociotechnical approach implies that safety must be considered from a complexity perspective as an emergent property. Hence, a variety of methodological approaches is required.