Steve Casner
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Articles by Steve Casner
Reading recommendations on risk management: 4 books to add to your April reading list
How to recognize, prioritize and mobilize solutions for the risks you face in your organization This is the fourth in a year-long series where I share my top risk management reading recommendations. These are the books I review regularly regarding the discipline of risk management and related issues. Each of these gives you hints on how to recognize, prioritize and mobilize solutions for the risks you face in your organization.
Your driver-assist system may be out of alignment-with your understanding of how it works
Advanced driver-assist systems can lull drivers into taking their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road when they shouldn’t. Credit: Jakob Härter/Flickr, CC BY-SA Adaptive cruise control, lane change assistance, collision avoidance, blind spot monitoring, autopilots: These are just a few of the driver-assist features that are arriving in new cars. As technology races ahead with the aim of making driving safer, drivers are left with the daunting task of figuring out how it all works.
New Car Technology Is Making Us Worse Drivers. But It Doesn’t Have To.
Getty Images Plus. “Tesla With Autopilot Hits Cop Car—Driver Admits He Was Watching a Movie.” The headline from August was riveting—and easy for readers to dismiss as something that could never happen to them. While an unfortunate few can turn anything you hand them into an implement of disaster, most of us possess the common sense to not do anything so reckless while driving new automation-equipped cars. At least, we think we do. But shrug off that headline at your own peril.
Whatever You Do During a Pandemic, Don’t Get Hurt Doing Dumb Stuff
This is the worst time in modern history to get hurt doing dumb stuff. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by pxel66/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Why Did Tech Companies Stockpile Millions of Medical Masks? Please, Let’s Stop the Epidemic of Armchair Epidemiology What the Pandemic Is Telling Us About Science, Politics, and Values How Do We Know We Are Doing the Right Thing?
Technology Is Breaking Everything We Know About Staying Safe
We’re designing new ways to off ourselves, and no one seems to be worried about it. Before technology came along, hazards were mostly self-explanatory. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Granger Wootz/Thinkstock. Musk. Hawking. Gates. The tech visionaries have redoubled their warnings about how we could destroy ourselves with technology. But they’re not talking about deliberately pushing buttons to trigger annihilation—Kennedy and Khrushchev could have done that back in ’62.
The Six Main Causes of Car Crashes—and How to Avoid Them This Thanksgiving
Let science show you how to skip your next roadway disaster. Firefighters help clean up the scene of a fatal accident that killed seven people when the SUV they were riding in crashed off an I-25 overpass and burst into flames early Thanksgiving morning on Nov. 28, 2008, near Johnstown, Colorado. Brian Brainerd/The Denver Post via Getty Images Car crashes are mysteries. Even though roughly 6 million of them happen each year in the United States alone, we seldom learn much.
This Is Your Brain on Stress
Hugh Threlfall/Alamy Stock Photo Less than two minutes after takeoff, some Canada geese found their way into the airplane’s two engines and brought them to a grinding halt. Over the next three and a half minutes, the crew managed to identify the problem, decide what to do about it, and execute what a former National Transportation Safety Board member called “the most successful ditching in aviation history.” How did the crew begin this historic performance?
What the Miracle on the Hudson Teaches Us About Responding to Emergencies
What the Miracle on the Hudson teaches us about thinking in an emergency—whether a fire or a disastrous accidental reply all. A New York City Fire Department boat floats next to the US Airways plane after it crashed into the Hudson River in New York City on Jan. 15, 2009. Jerritt Clark/Getty Images Doctors’ Filthy Cellphones Could Make Patients Sick The Shutdown Could Do Long-Term Damage to U.S. Cybersecurity Why Did the Chinese Government Want to Hack Marriott Customer Data in the First Place?
San Francisco, Stay in Your Lanes – The Frisc
When I’m in the car, do I really choose my routes in the interest of rider and pedestrian safety? Or do I just find the fastest route available and let it rip? I wondered if anyone had collected data on drivers similar to what I had done with bikes and scooters. It turns out, they have.
Proficiency: On the safe side
General aviation activity is increasing again and the accident rate continues to decline. That’s right, we’ve got more pilots buzzing around and better safety (see “On the Numbers”). To appreciate how impressive our safety record is, let’s stick our heads out the aircraft window and see how the rest of the world is doing—while they’re driving their cars, crossing the street, or using tools. Car crash fatalities have spiked 15 percent over the past two years. Pedestrian fatalities are up 11 percent.
Forget Virtual Reality. The Airline Industry Is Sticking With Its Old Flight Simulators.
This article is part of Update or Die, a series from Future Tense about how businesses and other organizations keep up with technological change—and the cost of falling behind. Few passengers realize that in the airline industry, we exclusively train our pilots using simulators. When a new-hire pilot flies the real airplane for the first time, it’s with paying customers in the back.
Why We Can't Stop Texting and Driving
Once smartphones arrived in the hands of the masses, it didn’t take long for drivers to start using them behind the wheel — not only to make calls, but also to send text messages. Even more alarming: studies showed that the presence of passengers, even child passengers, didn’t seem to deter drivers from using their shiny new toys. Distracted driving crashes began to spike, safety campaigns were launched, and now the warnings are everywhere.
The six main causes of car crashes.
Car crashes are mysteries. Even though roughly 6 million of them happen each year in the United States alone, we seldom learn much. When we do drive by a crash, we often slow down to have a look. But there’s never much to see. Two crumpled cars. Maybe one upside down. An ambulance closing its doors. I usually feel bad—for those who may have gotten hurt (or worse), of course, but also because my rubbernecking contributes to the logjam of cars behind me.
Technology is breaking everything we know about staying safe.
Musk. Hawking. Gates. The tech visionaries have redoubled their warnings about how we could destroy ourselves with technology. But they’re not talking about deliberately pushing buttons to trigger annihilation—Kennedy and Khrushchev could have done that back in ’62. They mean accidentally killing ourselves with something that we invent for our own benefit, that later acquires a mind of its own and a shirty attitude.
‘Careful’ points out everyday dangers and measures to ensure safety
There are no accidents. Steve Casner, author of “Careful: A User’s Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds,” maintains that almost every unintentional injury and death is preventable. He knows whereof he speaks. The NASA research psychologist has dedicated the past 20 years of his life to ensuring the safety of people who are hurtling through space.
Anatomy of a Car Crash
Firefighters help clean up the scene of a fatal accident that killed seven people when the SUV they were riding in crashed off an I-25 overpass and burst into flames early Thanksgiving morning on Nov. 28, 2008, near Johnstown, Colorado. Photo by Brian Brainerd/The Denver Post via Getty Images. Car crashes are mysteries. Even though roughly 6 million of them happen each year in the United States alone, we seldom learn much. When we do drive by a crash, we often slow down to have a look.
When driving a semiautonomous car becomes harder than piloting a semiautonomous plane
Slip into the cockpit of an airplane today and you might feel a little left out. Much of flying amounts to typing your route into the computer, pushing buttons, twisting knobs and watching the controls move as if they were being operated by invisible hands. Colorful displays show you the status of the airplane's systems along with the other airplanes, terrain and weather systems in your vicinity. When something troublesome pops up, the computers let you know.
When driving a semiautonomous car becomes harder than piloting a semiautonomous plane.
Slip into the cockpit of an airplane today and instead of feeling like Mav, Goose, or Iceman, you might feel a little left out. Much of flying amounts to typing your route into the computer, pushing buttons, twisting knobs, and watching the controls move as if they were being operated by invisible hands. Colorful displays show you the status of the airplane’s systems along with the other airplanes, terrain, and weather systems in your vicinity.
Airline Pilots Admit Their Minds Wander
People are inherently bad at watching computers work, and unlikely to get any better, no matter how much training we get, new research with airline pilots shows. “Our study really does suggest that vigilance is a very difficult task for people,” says Jonathan Schooler, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Extended uninterrupted monitoring can be draining.
Relax, a Drone Isn’t Going to Bring Down Your Next Airline Flight
FROM SLATE, NEW AMERICA, AND ASU Why airline pilots aren’t all that worried about drones. This Boeing 737-700 and quadcopter drone are not likely to interfere with each other. Photo illustration by Juliana Jiménez. Photos by Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images and Andreas Rentz/Getty Images. “Passenger Plane Barely Dodges Drone Above New York” cried a Time magazine headline earlier this year. How scary does that sound? And the reports of close calls between airliners and small drones keep coming.
Having One Pilot in the Cockpit Might Be Scarier Than Having None
If you strolled through a 1950s airport, you would have seen a flight crew of four stride by in step, sporting aviator sunglasses and dressed to the nines. They’d be headed into the office. Up top, where the sky’s blue, the coffee’s hot, and the view can’t be beat. The cockpit they knew had more gauges and switches than the top floor of Frankenstein’s castle, and each crew member was master of his own part of it. They had wild layovers in faraway places that most people only dreamed of ever going.
Having one pilot in the cockpit can be scarier than having none.
As automation assumes more and more control of flights, pilots must remain ready to intervene when something goes wrong. But when they’re not busy saving the day, what do pilots do while monitoring the automation? Studies show that pilots spend impressive amounts of this time talking to each other , mind-wandering , and drifting out of the loop .
Can hugs make you healthier?
It’s February. Are you sick? If you are, don’t fret. The Centers for Disease Control tells us that cold and flu season peaks in January and February, so statistically speaking, your sniffles are nothing special. And, believe me, I feel for you. I have a 4-year-old daughter who is the most thoroughgoing germ collector known to humankind. Every day she trots home from her language immersion preschool, an international clearinghouse for viruses.
Automation in the cockpit is making pilots’ thinking skills duller.
In July of 2013, the crew of Asiana Flight 214 allowed their attention to lapse during an approach to San Francisco International Airport. As the pilot manually steered the airplane, he relied on an automated system to control the airplane’s speed. For reasons the crew misunderstood, that system allowed the airplane’s speed to drop dangerously low. By the time the crew noticed the problem, it was too late and the airplane crashed short of the runway. I read Ebbatson’s paper with great interest.
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