From Where I Sit: Unexpected Bed Fellows

Periodically, we receive notes and letters from industry safety experts. This one challenges us to step out of our comfort zones and face some interesting concepts of safety partnership. Care to join in the conversation?

Most aviation accident investigators distrust, or even harbor a strong dislike for attorneys, reporters and politicians. My colleagues would probably tell you that “outsiders” don’t understand aviation, they assign blame unfairly, have unreasonable expectations, propose foolish fixes, create mountains out of molehills, and generally make our jobs needlessly difficult and frustrating.

The investigator or safety guy will probably have good examples of the outsider’s outlandish interference and misdeeds. At least a few of those examples will hold a modicum of truth. I freely admit that through most of my 25 or so years as an accident investigator, I was relatively certain that if “they” would just leave us alone to do our jobs, we could figure out what really causes the accidents and how to prevent them from happening again.

But lately I am seeing things a little differently. Investigator and safety professionals have learned a lot and produced many good ideas, but we often have a difficult time getting those ideas adopted.

What really turned many of the good ideas into actual hardware, training or procedures seems to be the fear of litigation (thanks to attorneys), or (unpopular) politicians reacting to public outcry (fanned by reporters) and forcing the aviation industry into action. The bottom line is that what we can’t get accomplished seems to get done by those “outsiders” who we mistrusted and even rail against.

I now see more clearly how the “system” really works. The lawyers, reporters and politicians tell us how “safe” aviation needs to be. This allows us safety people to put our solutions to work and gives us the mandate to figure out how to hit the ever-changing safety target. Although it may irk us, we must accept how the system works to raise the safety bar. The unfairly assigned blame, unreasonable expectations, foolish fixes, and molehill mountains facilitate our shared goal of improving safety. The despised reporter, legislator or court ruling may actually advance safety more effectively than the most ardent and effective company safety champion. Doesn’t that beat all?

Now I don’t suppose that we aviation folks will ever have a great love for the “outsiders.” We will probably talk trash about them as we have for years. We might give them a begrudging “Yeah, they are worth something, I guess,” response before we stubbornly beat on them again. But maybe we can at least see that, in a strange and unforeseen way, we are actually bedfellows in this complex safety business.