Driving on Autopilot Toward Situational Awareness

The real threat to driving safety is the autopilot we all develop over a lifetime of driving for personal reasons outside of the work setting.  

This morning I was a lone worker. I drove my vehicle into work today and did so alone with just my favorite blues station on the radio. I had to be responsible for my own safety. No one was there to alert me to risks (as my son is so prone to do now) or help me think through the process of navigating hazards. Alternatively, no one was there to distract me from performing the driving task safely. In the end, I got to my office safely. However, I cannot tell you the actions I took to arrive safety. I was on a type of autopilot.

My autopilot helped me drive safely. The Autopilot includes a set of behaviors such as using my safety belt, hugging the blind turns that are abundant in the mountains, maintaining a safe speed for the situation, and stopping when appropriate. Thinking back, I honestly couldn’t tell you if I indeed did those things but I assume I did.

I can tell you that my mind was considering my to-do list, my son’s enjoyment of college, and an upcoming trip. I was not consciously thinking about the safety of my driving.

It's frankly amazing how a computer autopilot can do everything for an airline flight, takeoff, cruise, and even land, except for taxiing around the airport. But don’t look for airline pilots to be out of work. When on autopilot, when variance occurs in weather, routing, sensors, or within aircraft equipment, the pilot is alerted and can take over manual operations.

I can attest to times that I’ve been driving, relying on my autopilot and thinking of something else when my attention was suddenly activated, automatically and with split second timing, to a hazard on my drive. I go from a mind that is elsewhere to an adrenaline-aided focus bringing me to the right-here, right-now. And my behaviors followed quickly thereafter to modify my driving and avoid the hazard.  

This all happened so reflexively that it seemed as though the alerting, focusing, and behaviors occurred even before I was aware of the hazard. Thank goodness for that little fact of human neurology where sensory information is passed through the reactive parts of your brain before hitting the cortex where you become conscious of the situation. This allows us that split second head start that can make all the difference: It’s like you react first then become aware what your reacting to, you didn’t have to wait on the brain.

But most of the time my autopilot switch-off is not so dramatic. For example, the erratic actions of another driver will capture my focus away from my daydreaming and I’ll focus to avoid coming in contact with that driver’s erraticism.  

I was told by an insurance company manager that their single biggest exposure to injury is their agents’ driving; and that’s not the first time I heard that fact. Indeed, driving is one of the most dangerous activities in the work world. When driving, injuries can be life-threatening or life changing. Hazards are constantly fluctuating. Thus, the real threat to driving safety is the autopilot we all develop over a lifetime of driving for personal reasons outside of the work setting.  

On one hand, we drive so much for personal reasons that we gain extensive experience that helps us become more fluent and aware when new hazards come our way.  Indeed, research shows that one reason youth take more risks while driving than adults is because they just don’t have the experience to know when the situation is more hazardous and when their risks are more likely to result in a collision.  

Our experience driving, however, shapes an autopilot that usually does not translate well to driving on the job. The autopilot developed when driving for personal reasons is executed with a familiar vehicle in familiar surroundings. When we drive as part of our work we may be doing so in unfamiliar vehicles in unfamiliar surroundings. Reverting back to our personal autopilots can result in unconscious risks.  

Also, we have all been shaped to take risks because our personal autopilots work so well. These risks have been shaped up because we do them often and don’t get in a wreck. On familiar routes we can go so much into autopilot that we choose to eat, look at paperwork, or even text on our phones. (Do your own survey. While riding with someone else driving, look at other drivers… you’ll be amazed how many are texting!). When we take these personal autopilot risks to our work driving the increase collision rises significantly.  

Consider the driver making sales or service calls who travels in traffic while having to find and follow directions. Risk occurs when they get near their destination and then begin to engage their smart phone for direction help and look for location signage instead of remaining aware of other vehicles, traffic patterns, and road signs. Understand why this happens. Determine an alternative behavioral fix. For example, they could be trained to set destinations on their smart phones before starting the vehicle and pulling over to park when the directions get complicated or need resetting. Train this behavioral process until fluency demonstrated during ride-alongs or simulations.  

For the industrial driver in a non-traditional vehicle the variables may be much different. I’ve been in haul trucks carrying 200 tons of ore, or driving work crews in buses on makeshift roads, or transporting hazardous materials on back roads to service remote sites; you name it, workers have driven it. Each of these types of driving offer variables that must be understood and trained for. 

Videos and photographs of different situations containing potential hazards can be developed using old-timers' experience (the more realistic the better – such as the kangaroos that love to jump out in front of Aussie transport drivers or the manager in the F350 running across a mining road in front of your haul truck). Training would expose drivers to these videos and having them identify the hazards which can be reinforced during ride-along sessions until the driver can demonstrate situational awareness fluently.

Situational Awareness is essential for safe driving

Even a correctly-shaped behavioral autopilot for the lone driver should be turned off to rehearse safety driving skills intentionally and to practice hazard recognition during driving to reinforce situational awareness. A good way to do this is to prompt the employee to conduct self-observations periodically while engaged in the task. These observations should result in a list of safe behaviors, at-risk behaviors, and hazards identified during a 10-minute continuous section of time.

Fortunately, in this age of on-board computer monitoring systems adopted by many driving-intensive industries, messages can be sent to drivers from their dispatchers/supervisors to conduct a 10-minute self-observation. With voice recognition software, employee responses can be collected real-time and reviewed later.