>"The rat is always right." Green explained: "If you set up an experiment and the rat doesn’t do what you want it to do, it’s not because the rat is stupid, but because you set up the experiment wrong. It’s the same with humans."<p>I think this is important to remember in our field too. Too often I hear about a user story breaking down because "the user wasn't doing it right".. blaming the user is the wrong way to go -- you just set it up wrong.
> Even as the train moves toward you, and you move toward it, the train’s image maintains a relatively constant position on your retina[...]<p>That's funny. The very first thing you learn on a ship is to watch out for exactly this. Any ship that maintains it's position relative to yours is on a collision course!
In the Netherlands there was a horrible accident a couple of years ago with children who'd been picked up by daycare staff in a small electric bicycle wagon where 4 of the children were killed. I still remember the feeling of reading the headline. Since then I've read that municipalities are accelerating the transition from railway crossings in urban centres to underpasses, despite the huge cost of this re-engineering. I think the problem with railway crossings is that they are just inherently dangerous, and the severity side of the risk equation if you get a crossing wrong is huge (potentially multiple people being killed).<p>I like the Dutch approach here: replace them entirely.<p><a href="https://www.bd.nl/oss/vier-kinderen-4-tot-11-jaar-omgekomen-bij-ongeval-op-spoor-in-oss-twee-zwaargewonden-nog-in-levensgevaar~a22f10de/?referrer=https://www.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bd.nl/oss/vier-kinderen-4-tot-11-jaar-omgekomen-...</a>
This article had lots of echos from The Design of Everyday Things. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. Before I did "design" was a word meant mostly aesthetics with a little UX sprinkled on to me. This is 100% a design problem, and we have to design systems for people that are stressed, in a hurry, confused, think they are smarter than they are, you name it. The part about differentiating markings for active and passive crossings is especially poignant for me. I ride bikes a lot and cross numerous passive crossings on smaller country roads. It's not that I don't understand how those crossing works, but I'll admit that I often subconsciously think to myself, "they designed this not to kill me if I don't disobey the bells and gates" as I tear past it after a quick glance.
I do notice some improvements in a few places over the last 17 years. Many busy highways now have overpasses. Many grade crossings have traffic lights as well. That’s good design in my opinion, like putting a stop sign bar on the school bus.<p>I don’t know why grade crossings without gates do not also have stop signs. We have to assume that many drivers are unaware of the rules of the road, either through lack of training, forgetfulness, local culture, or inconsistencies with other countries.
"One peculiarity of human perception is that large objects in motion appear to be moving more slowly than they really are" - Folks, never cross the roads/tracks when you see a vehicle approaching. Wait for it to pass and then cross.
For millions of years, the largest moving object humans had to deal was the size of an elephant. You can look at the time the object travels its length in and get some rough estimate of speed from there. You won't be mistaken that much.<p>Now, take a 50 meter long airplane or 100 meter long train. Or a 300 m long ship. It's not going to work - fatal accidents ensue.
TIL: "The rat is always right."<p>//edit: okay, the above is a bit minialistic, so, in full: The article is a good point on how systems have to adapt to actual human (mis-)behaviour, instead of relying on wishful thinking on how humans should behave.
Railway crossing design has parallels in software design. Rare events, expensive safety/security mechanisms, expensive redesign, and safety/security mechanisms that are perceived as repetitive irritants rather than timely helpers.
This same set of perceptual illusion is the cause of one of the more common motorcycle crashes, colloquially known as the SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn't See You) accidents:<p><a href="https://motorbikewriter.com/smidsy-biggest-cause-crashes/" rel="nofollow">https://motorbikewriter.com/smidsy-biggest-cause-crashes/</a><p><a href="https://motorbikewriter.com/scientific-studies-explain-smidsy/" rel="nofollow">https://motorbikewriter.com/scientific-studies-explain-smids...</a><p>Most drivers find it very hard to estimate the closing speed of a 2 wheeled vehicle approaching an intersection.
> “Railroad crossing deaths in the U.S. have come down from 786 in 1975 to 315 in 2001. ... I think this was largely due to the U.S. government’s rail-highway crossings program which since 1978 has injected $4 billion into crossings improvements"<p>Cars have become a lot safer in that time. And the number of crossings changed by a factor of 0.68. Both of these could account for the reduction in railroad crossing deaths.
> the traditional American crossbuck, the simple X-shaped railroad sign that warns drivers to yield to an oncoming train.<p>I would guess that roadway signage in the US runs about
80:20 textual:symbolic, but that the EU runs about 20:80,
with much heavier use of symbols, and use of text only
to modify or explain something not covered by the available
symbolic palette. Could any EU->US or US->EU migratory
drivers make their own estimates?
In our country we have unprotected (sign-only) crossings, red light crossings without barriers, red light and barriers crossings and red-white light crossing (with out without barriers). The blinking white light informs the safety system is working and it is safe to cross. Unfortunately, they are actually removing the white lights to match the rest of the EU.
One could say that these railway crossings are <i>adversarial examples</i> that trigger visual misperceptions in the organic neural networks inside our heads.
>The tendency to blame the victim<p>They're only victims of their own stupidity. The real victims are the train drivers who are often traumatized, injured, or even killed in these collisions through no fault of their own.<p>The same goes for other occupants of the car. Pretty much everyone but the driver.
> <i>One peculiarity of human perception is that large objects in motion appear to be moving more slowly than they really are</i><p>Rule #1: if you are at a <i>railway crossing</i> and you see a large object in motion coming down the track, then <i>stop</i> and let that large object pass before you try to cross the tracks!
> The tendency to blame the victim in grade-crossing accidents exasperates cognitive psychologist Green: “That lets the authorities off the hook. Then they don’t have to redesign the system.”<p>And why should they? Some people die, but how many times more people do cross successfully?