[SystemSafety] Alton Towers was HF

[Carl Sandom]

I don't agree with the findings as reported. According to the UK Health & Safety Executive's own definition:

"A human error is an action or decision which was not intended. A violation is a deliberate deviation from a rule or procedure." http://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/humanfail.htm

Disabling the safety system override was an intended violation. Intent is an important distinction in Human Factors analyses.

Best Regards
Carl
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Dr. Carl Sandom, Director, iSys Integrity Limited, +44 (0) 7967 672560
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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Bernard Ladkin [mailto:ladkin at rvs.uni-bielefeld.de] 
Sent: 22 April 2016 12:04
To: The System Safety List <systemsafety at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>; Harald Schaub <schaub at iabg.de>; Karsten Loer <karsten.loer at sysacon.com>; Werner Krämer <werner.kraemer at siemens.com>; Carl Sandom <carl at isys-integrity.com>
Subject: Alton Towers was HF

For those who don't know, an amusement park in England, Alton Towers, suffered an accident on its new Smiler ride on 2 June 2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiler_(roller_coaster) Some people were seriously injured.

The UK HSE has prosecuted the owner and court proceedings have just started. The owner has pleaded guilty. The technical engineering was all OK. The human engineering not so. Summary: it was HF.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/22/alton-towers-owner-pleads-guilty-over-smiler-rollercoaster-crash

A question for those of you in IEC SC65A WG 17 on HF and functional safety: does your current proposal require measures which, had they been followed, would have avoided this accident?

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de