
Derailing illusions that kill: misperceptions at railway crossings (2003) - mryall
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-derailing-illusions-that-kill-20150224-story.html
======
parliament32
>"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."

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.

~~~
chongli
_blaming the user is the wrong way to go -- you just set it up wrong._

Sometimes the user is wrong. If a person drives their car into a lake and
drowns, do we say that cars are broken because they allow this? Or do we point
to the millions of other drivers out there and say that driving on roads (and
not into lakes) is the expected user behaviour?

An extreme example, sure, but I think it also translates to software. Some
people criticize vi/vim for being modal because it confuses beginners. They
use this as the basis of an argument that vi is a bad way to edit text or that
modal interfaces are bad in general. But tons of other people take the time to
learn the vi system of modal editing and they love it so much that they write
plugins for everything else in an attempt to replicate that experience. Who is
wrong here?

~~~
vertex-four
That vim dumps you into a screen with no guidance and where your keypresses
appear to do nothing (or apparently random things!) would be the problem here.
It would take very little to have it say "type :help to learn how to use this
program" in the bottom of the screen when it starts up. It's also confusing
because many Linux systems are set up by default to launch vim whenever
another application requests an editor, even if the user uses something they
are more comfortable with otherwise. This could be resolved by asking "which
editor do you want to use?" instead of dumping the user into a randomly
selected editor.

You can build powerful systems without confusing people who often never
intended to wind up in your program in the first place. You can even build
them to show people how to use them.

~~~
jlg23
> It's also confusing because many Linux systems are set up by default to
> launch vim whenever another application requests an editor, even if the user
> uses something they are more comfortable with otherwise.
    
    
      export EDITOR=/my/fancy/editor

~~~
bobthepanda
You usually don’t figure this out until after you’ve already run into this
issue.

In Windows if you open a new filetype for the first time, it asks you what
application you’d like to set as the default type, and on top of that it tells
you where to go to change that later. That’s what beginner friendly UX looks
like, not just throwing the newborn into the pool like Linux does with Vim
editing.

~~~
jlg23
It is not that I don't understand the "problem" \- after all, I ended my very
first accidental vi session with a reboot as well. But that was 23 years ago,
long before Linux/GNU distros would be installed with a GUI and then boot into
a GUI.

If the "newborn" in 2020 insists on using the terminal instead of the much
more beginner friendly options that are the default nowadays... granted, but
why compare a terminal editor in unix to a GUI? That is like comparing apples
and oranges and then complaining that the strawberries don't taste like
bananas.

~~~
bobthepanda
Throwing up a menu to provide context and ask you what you want to do, rather
than assuming a default, is not some thing that only magical GUIs can do. CLIs
with menus is not some crazy new thing.

As an example of how manually configuring the editor flag can be annoying,
consider a job where you regularly ssh into many machines, each that just by
default use vim. I know how to use vim, I just don't like it, but pretty much
every single machine I have booted into always assumes I want to use vim, and
even if you remember to change the flag doing it to many machines all the time
is majorly annoying.

------
LeChuck
> Even as the train moves toward you, and you move toward it, the train’s
> image maintains a relatively constant position on your retina[...]

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!

~~~
klodolph
This is how old air-to-air missiles worked. They would steer until the image
of the target stopped moving. This was something simple enough that you could
make it work electronically in the 1960s.

~~~
gruez
> This is how old air-to-air missiles worked. They would steer until the image
> of the target stopped moving.

That seems to be a weird way of describing "steer so the target is always in
center of the image".

~~~
projektfu
Not necessarily on center. Constant bearing but decreasing range will result
in a collision.

~~~
Gravityloss
Exactly! If the target was in the center, that would mean the missile was
pointed to the target's current location. The target would quickly drift out
of view!

Instead you want to intercept the target. You want to reach the point where
the target will be, and at the same time as you. So keep the target to the
side, at a constant angle.

~~~
1e-9
Imaging missiles typically have the sensor mounted on a gimbal so the target
can be centered in the image even when the missile body is not pointed at the
target. But yes, the line-of-sight to the target will generally be off of the
missile boresight.

------
davedx
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).

I like the Dutch approach here: replace them entirely.

[https://www.bd.nl/oss/vier-kinderen-4-tot-11-jaar-
omgekomen-...](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/)

~~~
tialaramex
Yup. British policy is the same. No new at-grade crossings. Existing at-grade
crossings to be closed where possible. Where a crossing cannot be closed,
upgrade it to achieve acceptable safety margins, revisit annually.

There are three different examples near me of crossings they haven't closed
with very different scenarios.

1\. A large industrial estate built on the tidal river is reached via a road
only barely above sea level. The road is used by lots of heavy articulated
vehicles (it is after all an industrial estate) yet it crosses a four track
railway that serves both freight and passenger traffic to a major city.
Result? A major at-grade crossing which is closed to road traffic for about
10-15 minutes at a time as much as three times in an hour. This crossing has
full barriers, and a pedestrian bridge (so pedestrians needn't wait for the
barriers). There's no way to dig down (it'd flood) and a road bridge would
have to be very large to carry those articulated trucks but there's nowhere to
put it. I expect this crossing will remain until forces of gentrification some
day mean the industrial estate turns into housing and they just close the
crossing altogether.

2\. Where that same railway once went through the city to deliver rich people
to the ocean liner terminal itself the passenger trains these days are
diverted through a tunnel under the city - however a few freight trains per
month still make the journey to the docks. So a wide city road goes over an
at-grade crossing that is rarely needed, most users probably have no idea it's
a crossing. This is a full gated crossing, but it's manually operated. A crew
will come out, switch on stop lights, block the road, move the gates, then one
train drives in or out of the docks, then they unwind everything. Because it's
so seldom used a bridge seems unacceptably costly, and because it's manual I'd
guess the residual risk is low so I expect this to remain in use essentially
forever.

3\. A rail branch towards another coastal city cuts across a residential
street I used to live on. This one I can imagine closing. It's currently using
full barriers but has no pedestrian route except to just walk to the nearest
bridge. I think sooner or later somebody will get themselves killed,
clambering over the barriers or whatever and they'll just close it because
there's no way to make it any safer other than closing it.

~~~
bobthepanda
Interestingly enough, Japan has a crazy amount of rail crossings, including
smack in the middle of busy districts like Shibuya in Tokyo where the gates
are down for the majority of the hour; yet they seem to have less fatal
accidents than peers. I wonder what's driving the difference there?

------
eloisius
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.

~~~
ghaff
One thing I remember from that book that drives me crazy is the bit about push
vs. pull door handles. You see handles that you intuitively pull on both the
push and pull sides of doors all the time. (Our HQ building is one of them.
I'm usually only there once or twice a year and I can never remember to pull
or push the handles on both sides of the elevator core.

~~~
happysadpanda2
In a sane (or well-regulated) world, all doors would always open outwards, in
the direction of the nearest exit. In case of fire, you don't want a horde of
people pressing an inwards opening door shut

~~~
a3n
I seem to remember the classroom doors of my elementary school (I'm in my
sixties) opening in to the classroom, so that during an emergency they
wouldn't be pressed closed by the panicking hords rushing by in the hallway,
and so that opening them wouldn't injure those panicking hords.

~~~
ghaff
You also often see bathroom doors that open in; I had this random conversation
with someone at a conference last year. I assume the theory is (assuming there
is one) that there would rarely be so many people crammed in a bathroom that
there'd be such a crush to get out that it would be hazardous. On the other
hand, even day-to-day bathrooms are sometimes located such that someone
quickly walking down the hall looking at their phone could fairly easily be
slammed into by a door being swung out into the hallway.

------
projektfu
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.

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.

------
seesawtron
"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.

~~~
Jabbles
Crossing roads is different - and it would be often impossible if you had to
wait until no vehicle was approaching.

But as this article points out, you can't use your experience judging car
distance/speed to judge train distance/speed.

------
de_watcher
The hell? Just put big automatic gates everywhere. Seems like a simple
life/cost estimation exercise.

~~~
paulcole
Think about the thing you know best. Imagine an article about a challenging
problem related to that thing. A person with almost no knowledge of that thing
reads it and says, “Seems simple enough” and presents a solution. Are they
likely to have overlooked something? Misunderstood the problem? Be unaware of
the challenges in solving it?

~~~
misnome
By my interpretation of the article, it seems to agree that this is the
solution. The caveats seem to come mostly from paying for it.

------
Gravityloss
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.

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.

------
archi42
TIL: "The rat is always right."

//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.

~~~
Gravityloss
A hundred years ago, tradespeople were often missing fingers. For some reason,
it was really hard to sell the idea of safer equipment.

I bet it has something in common about hand washing in hospitals taking some
hundred years to become mandatory - or how it was done much earlier in
Hungary, yet nobody outside believed in it.

------
sradman
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.

------
jgeada
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:

[https://motorbikewriter.com/smidsy-biggest-cause-
crashes/](https://motorbikewriter.com/smidsy-biggest-cause-crashes/)

[https://motorbikewriter.com/scientific-studies-explain-
smids...](https://motorbikewriter.com/scientific-studies-explain-smidsy/)

Most drivers find it very hard to estimate the closing speed of a 2 wheeled
vehicle approaching an intersection.

------
mleonhard
> “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"

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.

------
dmckeon
> the traditional American crossbuck, the simple X-shaped railroad sign that
> warns drivers to yield to an oncoming train.

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?

~~~
supernova87a
"How did you not realize that the empty circle means no parking from the hours
of 1000-1600??"

~~~
brnt
Is signage not in the driving exam in your locale?

~~~
supernova87a
For someone coming to a European country and driving by virtue of reciprocal
driving license permission (not having to take an exam), those signs are not
at all intuitive.

~~~
brnt
They're not meant to be intuitive, you're meant to learn them.

------
janci
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.

~~~
potiuper
Red light crossings seem especially disadvantagous for red colorblind
individuals with the addition of white light signals.

------
cs702
One could say that these railway crossings are _adversarial examples_ that
trigger visual misperceptions in the organic neural networks inside our heads.

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/Rynhm](https://archive.is/Rynhm)

------
chmod775
>The tendency to blame the victim

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.

The same goes for other occupants of the car. Pretty much everyone but the
driver.

------
rob74
> _One peculiarity of human perception is that large objects in motion appear
> to be moving more slowly than they really are_

Rule #1: if you are at a _railway crossing_ and you see a large object in
motion coming down the track, then _stop_ and let that large object pass
before you try to cross the tracks!

~~~
bob1029
I love how this article tries to make this sound like a complex affair. Only
the most ridiculously stupid person would be in a situation where they are
continuously trying to judge the position of the train relative to their own
position as they attempt to beat a crossing. The only situation where you
should ever be remotely in danger is if all of your braking and steering
catastrophically fail at that exact moment and there is nothing to stop you
from rolling directly into the train.

I also find it amusing that all of the stories regarding train-car
interactions seem to occur at crossings with modern signaling devices, rather
than "at your own discretion" crossings in the middle of nowhere. This leads
me to suspect that the typical human has been conditioned to treat any
signalized intersection transition as a "beat the yellow" event, but in the
case of a rail crossing the brutal physics equations seem to be conveniently
ignored.

Perhaps there needs to be a day in driver's education courses where everyone
has to review just how heavy a freight train is and how much kinetic energy
must be dissipated in order for it to come to a complete stop. Maybe make them
ride at the front of a train to experience how painfully long an emergency
braking maneuver takes to complete.

~~~
csunbird
In German written driving license test, there is a section literally dedicated
for railway crossings.

Edit: Clarified that it is written test.

~~~
eloisius
In my state of Georgia it was the only thing I failed on my driving test (we
didn't have driver's ed when I a kid, you just practiced with your parents and
then took one test). I yielded and looked but didn't come to a full stop. I
remember it took 15 or 25 points off of my score, but since it was the only
thing I failed, I still passed the exam.

The things is, I don't remember the written test I took having any content at
all about railroad crossings.

~~~
_sbrk
> I yielded and looked but didn't come to a full stop.

Physics tells us that we should accelerate to spend the least amount of time
in the danger zone (rail bed). Since the velocities are orthogonal, it doesn't
matter if you are hit by a train when your car is going 55 or 5 MPH (probably,
unless trees in the resulting vector of your now pulped car).

It never made any sense to me to see school busses stopping at a grade
crossing, then taking an extraordinarily long time to cross those tracks. What
happens if the engine fails while on those tracks and a high speed train
appears.

No, my vote is to make sure you have a clear view of the tracks in both
directions and punch it. Less probability of interacting with a train.

~~~
eloisius
Thanks, 17-year-old me feels validated.

------
pif
> 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.”

And why should they? Some people die, but how many times more people do cross
successfully?

~~~
rsynnott
I mean, you could say that of practically any safety rule. "Sure, some people
die of cholera, but most don't, so continue dumping the sewage into the
drinking water".

