STEP CHANGE FOR SAFETY GLOBAL SHARING DEC 2013 - SAFE NAVIGATION | Page 25

Situational Awareness and Task Distraction
“Situational awareness is vitally important during pilotage and stand-by conditions where
the information flow can be quite high and poor decisions may lead to serious
consequences. Distractions can interrupt an individual’s ability to detect and process vital
information at a critical time.”
“To gather and process the incoming information in rapidly changing circumstances requires
judgment and decision making, if we are not paying attention, having a spirited
conversation, dialling a cell phone or distracted in some other way, problems arise, near
misses and accidents occur. Why? There is a break in our thought processes and we miss
critical information.”
“When we lose Situational Awareness we increase the potential for human error mishaps. A
US Coast Guard analysis of navigational mishaps for cutters and boats revealed that 40%
were due to a loss of situational awareness.”
Reproduced from a USCG paper on Loss of Situational Awareness