Home > Safety > Human Factor Barriers to Situational Awareness
Low Experience Level with Local Factors
- Unfamiliar with the area or the organizational structure.
Distraction from Primary Task
See Also
The Five Stages of Awareness and How to Communicate With Them - Hull Video Production - VIP Creative- Radio traffic
- Conflict
- Previous errors
- Collateral duties
- Incident within an incident
Fatigue
- Carbon monoxide
- Dehydration
- Heat stress
- Poor fitness level can reduce resistance to fatigue
- 24 hours awake affects your decision making capabilities, like 0.10 blood alcohol content.
Stress Reactions
- Communication deteriorates or grows tense
- Habitual or repetitive behaviors
- Target fixation – Locking into a course of action, whether it makes sense or not, just try harder.
- Action tunneling – Focusing on small tasks, but ignoring the big picture.
- Escalation of committment – Accepting increased risk, as completion of task gets near.
Hazardous Attitudes
- Invulnerable – That can’t happen to us
- Anti-authority – Disregard of the team effort
- Impulsive – Do something, even if it’s wrong
- Macho – Trying to impress or prove something
- Complacent – Just another routine fire
- Resigned – We can’t make a difference
- Group Think – Afraid to speak up or disagree
