Japan's Rail Workers Pointing at Things (2017)

When I worked on a large historical sailing ship that required a dozen crew to perform tasks like raising sails, tacking, or reefing, we followed a call-and-response verbal command system for many of the same reasons.

When the helmsman would yell out "Ready about!", we would check the surroundings and respond "Ready!", then we would listen for "Helms Alee!" and prepare to switch sides and trim the sails. This process made sure that all of the crew were synchronized as to the current step in the process.[0]

[0] http://lrsailingcenter.com/posts/tacking/

> While some workers point-and-call more enthusiastically than others

Yes, I have seen this. Rail workers are great at it, but in other places, it can get worse. I saw a guy pointing to both sides of the sidewalk - to assure that it was free of people - before letting a truck get into a parking lot. His colleague will barely move the hands. It looked slightly awkward.

> Japanese commentators have theorized that Western employees feel “silly” performing the requisite gestures and calls.

I guess that this is what humans are bad at. We overvalue our awareness, and we put a lot of much weight on any act with social implications.

While I was at Fuji, I saw what it seemed a guy training alongside the train driver. He laughed time to time at his own movements. They both had a great time. So, even for Japanese, seems that the situation is slightly awkward.

I would be prepared to completely ignore (and definitely not laugh at) rail personnel performing a naked rain dance if it meant that the trains would arrive on time more often. Hell, I'd join in if that helped.

The book I'm reading currently 'modular habits' uses the Japanese train conductors usage of this finger pointing an example of how to reinforce habits - the accident reduction noted with this technique was quite significant.

On another note - how strange is it when you learn something new of which you haven't known about your whole life only to several days later see it appear on hn.. is there a name for this sort of thing?

I do something similiar with my keys: "I'm putting my keys on the sideboard".

Before that I occasionally "lost" my keys because the location was never safed to my long term memory. At least that's reproducably the error why I sometimes just couldn't remember.

I use a similar system when deploying builds to production. The deployment itself is a multi-step process where I have to pick out two artifacts, verify that their git commit hashes are correct, then pick out the correct jenkins jobs and run them in a specific order (providing artifact numbers as input). At every stage I point to my screen, read out the information and only click on things that I'm pointing at. This may be anecdotal but multiple times I have stopped myself from clicking on the wrong thing only after saying its name out loud.

NYC's conductors do a similar thing when they pull into stations[1].

The urban myth that I grew up with was that they were pointing at a hidden camera to show the dispatcher that they're awake, but the article I linked below suggests that it was taken directly from the Japanese railway.

[1]: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mta-conductors-point-st...

Hand signals are common for many blue-collar team jobs. Cranes, aircraft ramp operations, marine work, military - where getting it wrong is deadly or at least expensive. It's only rare to white-collar types.

It's the opposite of "move fast and break things". Heavy-lift companies and marine salvage companies (there's overlap) are in the business of "move slowly and don't break things". Mammoet, Titan, and Smit all have videos on line of some of their jobs. They are way into overpreparing. They have more gear on site than you'd think was needed, they prepare for as much as a year for some operations, there are detailed, written plans and backup plans which have been rehearsed and talked through by the people involved, and then on the big day, everything goes so smoothly it's dull. Watch some of those videos and you'll see some explicit hand signals.

When I was at Google, my team and other SRE teams around us adopted a similar approach to sensitive operations - deploys and data migrations and the like. We'd have one of us on the keyboard operating, and another looking over our shoulder. The operator would type a command and they verbally confirm the action they were going to take. Their partner would look it over and give verbal acknowledgement. We certainly still had mistakes, but I found that environment very helpful - and it was an almost necessary part of zero-blame postmortems, because every action was not one person, but equally shared between two.

Many basketball players, after shooting a free throw for a technical or flagrant foul (where they are alone at the free throw line and no one else is lined up on the key) will reach out and slap the hands of their imaginary teammates like they would after a normal free throw. I always wondered if it was superstition, unconscious habit, or a developed habit.

(2017).

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14011793

It's effective for more than just safety. I suffer from mild anxiety over whether I have taken certain actions in a variety of every day scenarios. This behavior (pointing and verbally acknowledging) helps me cope with that sense of unease.

I came up with a new phishing avoidance scheme based on this, point at the url bar before typing your password.

"I'm reading an article on HN about Japanese rail workers pointing at things." "Done."

"I'm composing a snarky comment about Japanese rail workers pointing at things." "Done."

"I'm pressing 'add comment' to post a snarky comment about Japanese rail workers pointing at things." Wait, what? No. I know better than that. Abort.

It’s kind of strange to see a country as dilligent as it is, and obsessed with flawless execution as one finds its citizenry to be (Japan really does make some of the best stuff) that there’s some sort of emotional toll that leads to a high suicide rate and low birth rate.

Which is really a bummer, because on some level you tend to think, to buy into a stereotype, that the Japanese have their shit together, and you admire that, but the negative space of these qualities is that they never step out of line, and when they do, it’s the end of the world.

One of the most interesting things I saw on the rails when I was in Japan this year was on the Shinkansen (Bullet train) from Kyoto to Tokyo (and back again).

Every time the train guard went through, when he got to the front of the door he'd turn around, do a 180 spin to face the passengers and give them a salute before 180 spinning back and going to the next carriage in front. I know it's a cultural thing but it's a nice touch.

This is interesting, I remember watching "Carrier" and noticing that the 'shooters' at the catapult controls followed the same process of pointing at their board (and even out the window at the plane) as they went through their launch checklist.

Similarly for climbers: https://opp.uoregon.edu/climbing/topics/signals.html

This also works for stuff like switching off the stove or locking the front door. If you find yourself second guessing whether you did it...just narrate the activity as you do it. Sticks much better

Why drop the "why" from the title? Without it I assumed this was about behavior they carried over from what is otherwise just another mandatory workplace policy.

I am not sure I understand how it works, but if I had to take a guess it is because normally your thoughts and attention are invisible to others, but if policy mandates you to use body language to indicate your attention, then the employee realizes any lapse in attention will be visible from afar, so the employee who doesn't want to be seen losing attention it becomes mandatory to constantly show that yes you are in fact still paying attention...

'Shooters' in a US aircraift carrier doing 'point and call', showing you can have fun and be safe at the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFqlwAWuMTg It's a choreographed checklist, which is great because others can notice if you miss anything.

I've learned that the best way to make sure I don't forget to put my phone charger in my purse when I go to work in the morning is to point at the outlet and say "Charger, set!".

I got the idea after the last time an article about this phenomenon was posted, and it's worked beautifully since.

If Japanese rail does x, x is probably worth looking into.

I think it's neat. It visually and auditorily confirms to others that you are checking what needs to be checked, and reinforces the check in your own mind, letting you think about whether you are doing it properly.

Similarly, Japanese sysadmins must write down -- and get approval for -- every single shell command they intend to execute on prod before actually issuing the command, specifically to reduce the number of 'rm -rf /' oopses (and other breaking changes).

It may look unusual, but I wouldn't call such a thing silly. I've noticed that Japanese workers do just about everything so patently deliberately that there must always be a reason for it being that way.

I do this in every day life, it makes sure I don't forget things and gives me assurance that I did it. no more "did I turn off the oven?"

I see this all the time on the New York Subway too when conductors lean out and point. Must be the same thing?

If I point at my code will I make fewer mistakes. :-)