Why Japan’s rail workers point at things (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Why Japan’s rail workers point at things (2017)

atlasobscura.com

271 pointsretSava87 comments

Hadn't read this in a while - this made me think of similar applications of the same idea. I remember when I was shooting IDPA competitions, I made myself physically touch the chamber every time I cleared a firearm to ensure there was no ammunition there. If you're tired or distracted, it's too easy to just do a quick visual glance and maybe miss something. Physically touching it forces you to slow down and pay attention.

Techniques along this pattern seem like a good idea for anything that people do that has serious consequences for any screwups. Fortunately, current dayjob has plenty of procedure for production deployments. I've tried to come up with similar things when working for smaller teams with less procedure. When you're distracted, panicked, or in a rush is the highest risk for screw-ups, and so the most important time to slow down, double-check everything and make sure you get it right.

Walk out a door, slap all my pockets: keys, phone, wallet.

Eeee macarena - ay!

Strangely enough this is a very gendered thing, to the point where multiple women have pointed it out to me as the 'male 3-tap', and there isn't an equivalent 'purse shake' or likewise.

No, they have the "where's my keys?"-rummaging-thru-purse. :-)

I do this as well. I wonder if anyone else has made this mistake. The habit of the 3 tap has become so subconscious to me that if I have to remember another object, like tickets to a show or something I'm bringing to someone, I will then do the 3 tap and forget my phone.

Yeah, same here. In fact, I do this very often and as soon as I get on or off a bus. Don't know if I started this as a conscious thing or not, but now it's completely automatic.

Once I slapped my pockets after leaving a bus and felt a missing wallet at the same time the bus took off. That was a horrible feeling, like getting shaken out of a dream or something, I became hyper aware of the present. Until I realized I for once put the wallet in my breast pocket since it was crowded :)

My boyfriend has a more amusing (and slightly inappropriate) version of this, but oddly enough doesn't mention keys or phone in his version.

Does it involve spectacles and testicles?

Junk checking is important; gotta make sure the bits didn't teleport away.

Me: CRAP WHERE IS MY PHONE?

Also me: Honey, hold this. < hands phone to wife > Continues to rummage through all pockets looking for my phone.

I've absolutely done the following:

Walk out of office door. Lock office door. Immediately panic that I've just locked my keys in the office. Unlock door. Search a surprisingly long time for said keys. Sigh disappointely when I realize what just happened.

Yeah, but have you ever taken a final test, finish it early, go to the front desk, return to proof read it, place the paper in your back pack and just walk out, without submitting your test?

I'm thankful the driver's side of my VW van doesn't allow locking the door without closing it first. Unfortunately, the sliding door and passenger's side allow locking while open, so I'm always worried about locking my keys in when locking them even though I have 2 sets of spares.

Me: Where are my sunglasses?

(Rummages through all vehicles, drawers, closets, trash, dirty clothes, and attic storage.)

(Starts digging up the yard and opening up the walls.)

(Finally looks up.)

Me: Oh

I always wonder if in those situations where you find yourself rechecking it is related to this:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu...

Since reading about this on here I have added a version of this to my pre-flight checks (glider). I point and say everything in the cockpit and then do the checks using the traditional mnemonic with the hope that everything will be in the correct state. It turns out to be easier as I am only doing one thing at a time rather than having to remember the mnemonic at the same time as setting stuff. I am not sure I actually need the mnemonic any more.

We do this in multicrew and more complex planes as well. Point/flow through the cockpit to get to a specific configuration, then follow up with the checklist to verify. The 777 (and 787) is great for this because the built-in checklists on the computer screen automatically color everything that's in the correct state in green. So you go through the cockpit with your fingers in one flow, setting things correctly, then press the checklist button and if all is green we don't have to go through the list and read it but instead only call "X checklist completed".

I have a pair of cheap mechanics gloves with my flight gear and I put them on when start my preflight. I touch everything I am supposed to check. The gloves make it so I'm not worried about touching something oily / greasy / etc.

When doing my run up or cruise checklists (where I'm not hands on controls for critical flight phases) I point / touch each gauge / instrument I am checking (in steam gauges this makes more sense).

My CFIs have made fun of me but I don't care. I had one that asked if I wanted a borescope too but it doesn't stop me from being as safe as I want to be.

I'm both surprised and really not that your CFIs make fun of pointing and calling, then again I've encountered CFIs who don't know things AOPA Air Safety has been hammering on for years.

I think it's because pointing into space gives your actions physical coordinates that organize them similarly as in memory. In fact, a popular mnemonic technique is to envision the stuff you need to remember "positioned" along a street route or another physical space you know very well (it's called the Method of Loci).

For the glider checks, I've switched to printed checklists. I made a small plastified sheet for it.

I like it more than the mnemonic, because I'm able to put more things, reorganize to make more sense, use more straightforward words… without being constrained to fit an acronym.

Previous discussions:

959 points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14011793

272 points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18952193

The tomato sauce/umbrella rant is worth visiting the first one just on its own.

Some comments in there didn't age well:

""" You have no idea of the space that you are taking up with those things. You have no respect for your fellow humans. I hate you. And I don't want to live in this world with you. """

Nowadays an umbrella might be seen as a useful tool to mark distance keeping area ...

Ha. Somewhat relevant, I've discovered that an umbrella is a nice, nonconfrontational way to keep jackass bicyclists at a safe distance. It doesn't need to be open, just moving around with some energy, kind of like a walking stick.

I've stumbled over the same thing in this video of a "veteran pilot" flying a WW2 aircraft. Notice how he's pointing at the various dials and gears from time to time. I think the first time this might be because he's explaining to the viewer what's going on, but even after that when the motor is running or in the air he's doing a left-to-right sweep through the cockpit from time to time, pointing at things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1F_UJaaP1A

I don't know how common this is in aviation, but I had to think immediately of the Japanese railway workers.

PS: the same thing can be seen in this (admittedly silly and slightly outdated) aircraft carrier operation video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFqlwAWuMTg

Doing this is generally called a "flow":

* https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12707/

One popular one is "GUMPS":

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUMPS

Another is the BUMFISH (and variations) pre-landing check:

Breaks (Check Breaks for Pressure)

Undercarriage( Down and Locked)

Mixture (fully rich)

Fuel (Pump ON, Fullest Tank)

Instruments (For Night Flying, DI Align to Compass, Suction Gauge check)

Switches (Landing Lights On)

Hatches and Harness (Secure)

Pointing at instruments and touching the various controls while reciting the mnemonic was (for me) an important part of the procedure.

I think GUMPS is more of a mnemonic device used as a sort of mental checklist in an attempt to be able to remember more things reliably without the use of a written checklist. Different than pointing and calling which associates an action with the thing to be checked.

For computer folks, a mnemonic is like a hard disk b-tree.

It's a way to manage a large database by extracting a small collection of pointers into small fast memory, which is then expanded as needed by accessing slower remote memory

Aside from the flow technique mentioned below, I think it is pretty common.

If I'm acting as the non-flying pilot, my job is to talk to ATC, set radios, load flight plans and instrument approaches, etc. As an example (slight variation), if ATC gives us a flight level change, I would dial in the final altitude on the altitude pre-select. Typically, I'd repeat the clearance back to ATC, put my hand on the dial, change it and leave my hand on it until the flying pilot says "I see FL230".

I sometimes use the point technique before changing something, or after while repeating "I see ..." or "I did ...". It's really effective at making sure you don't do things mindlessly.

Flowchecks were popular in WWII, but are generally considered a little too vulnerable to memory and attention lapses in modern airliners. Airliners these days usually use challenge-response checklists where the PM (pilot monitoring) calls out checklist items and the PF (pilot flying) touches the switch or control and responds with the setting.

On a checklist it looks something like:

flaps .. set

fms .. set

EPR .. set

v1 .. 80 knots (below - abort for any emergency, above - abort only for those things that you really can't take into the air).

v2 .. 120 knots

runway .. 28L. Compass and HSI match with runway numbers. We are on the left runway.

takeoff clearance .. cleared for takeoff. My controls (PM says "your controls", PF repeats "my controls).

And so on.

You can see/hear the end of the preflight check list at https://youtu.be/vnqZnw25E-E?t=99 which is my absolute favorite aviation video of all time...

Love this way to "hack" how the human mind tends to optimize itself, much like how you can draw things upside down (the object, not yourself) to bypass the way the mind "knows" how things are supposed to look, instead how they actually look.

Try that - take a picture of a face from a magazine, draw it on a paper. It may come out distorted, since your mind exaggerates things that are more important to you (eyes, mouth more so than the forehead). Then turn the magazine upside down and draw it again. It often comes out much more similar to the original this time.

I do this to fight my OCD of checking repeatedly that I locked the doors.

To an extent it helps.

As a side note I noticed that after I stopped drinking coffee entirely my memory improved, but at the same time my OCD returned to heights I haven't seen since the first time I tried this beverage.

I wonder how this works?

One of the most common treatments for ADHD is essentially just amphetamines. Not a doctor, but it seems like CNS stimulants generally have this affect on some people with attention disorders.

I self-medicate ADD with nicotine and it does help. It's fairly addictive though, so, I wouldn't exactly recommend it.

Yeah, stopping is the problem for me. I can deal with the cravings for more... but damn if I don't get pissed off, cranky and depressed without it. It was way easier to quit Adderall.

I wouldn't call it full-blown OCD, but I also sometimes have the tendency of wondering if I have really closed all the windows, turned off the lights, locked the doors etc. etc. when I'm away from home. Maybe I'll start doing this too...

Yeah, I need to point at the stove and say "stove off" when I turn it off. A few times I have started driving away from my house and suddenly been hit by a sense of dread that I might have left the stove on after cooking breakfast.

Specifically for making sure I locked the doors at night, I read about a technique of singing a song while I do the first check. So later, in the haze of "did I or didn't I" lock the doors, I can remember that I sang the song and that satisfies my anxiety about needing to check the doors again. Of course, it needs to be a different song each night, but it works for me.

I took my kids to Disneyworld in Florida a few years back, and was impressed to notice the lifeguards pointing into the all corners of the swimming pools as they walked around and did their checks.

I was a lifeguard there in the late 90s. They taught it to us back then as well. But for politeness, you have to do the Disney two-finger point. I was taught that pointing with an index finger might be misconstrued as pointing at a person and come off as rude or offensive.

Two fingers or the knife hand.

It wasn't policy, but when I lifeguarded, I'd point out all of my checks as well.

There's another water park that does something similar in the pools. There are lifeguard chairs stationed around the pools as usual. There are guards in the pools as usual. There are also guards roving the edges of the pools doing visual inspections. To check over the edge, the lifeguard leans over the pool and purposefully traces a sight line with a full-sweep head motion.

NYC also does this, for the same reason:

https://youtu.be/i9jIsxQNz0M

> New York City’s MTA subway system, whose conductors have used a modified point-only system since 1996 after then Chief Transportation Officer Nathaniel Ford was fascinated by the point-and-call system during a business trip to Japan. In the MTA’s case, conductors point to a fixed black-and-white “zebra board” to confirm a stopped train is correctly located along the platform.

It does seem crazy that New York still has two man operation. A machine is also capable of confirming correct alignment to some marker, and won't get distracted or confused. I assume it's a union thing?

If you are going to spend millions of dollars (yes really) paying for an extra person on every train, clearly having them fixed in a place where they can point at a board so as to not automate an easy problem is a poor use compared to them roaming the train. Of course New York's trains still also don't have open gangways, so it wouldn't be easy to do that either. But a guard who actually strolls up and down the train helping passengers might actually make a useful difference compared to replacing a trivial mechanical sensor with a well-paid human.

I know nothing about subway in the US, but living in Japan, most systems here still have 2 staff per train. The conductor job here includes confirming overall safety of the train (including confirming stop position), open-close door, and general communication to the passengers. There are systems here that use 1 man to operate, but those are generally the lower throughput system.

For a high-traffic train, you need to have someone manually open and close the doors. You can't use automatic doors like on an elevator because someone will invariably keep them from shutting, either on purpose or by accident.

You really need an attentive person to keep people from being dragged--there is no substitute. (And in some curved stations, the driver can't even see to the rear end of the train.)

In principle, everything could be enclosed, like an elevator, but in practice most stations would be all but impossible to retrofit.

Then why does it work just fine with one conductor in most other metro systems?

> And in some curved stations, the driver can't even see to the rear end of the train.

Mirrors and CCTV are a thing. At the Berlin metro, the platform has a big mirror or a CCTV screen array next to where the train cockpit stops. Other metros' stations have wireless CCTV systems that show up inside the cockpit while the train is stopped.

Note that NYC trains have just one conductor, AFAIK. The second person is the driver.

For dragging, it's not just where the train stops. You have to be able to see the entire side of the train as it leaves the station (e.g., for 100 meters, at least).

Video might be possible, but it'd need to be attached to the train, because that's where the dragging happens. Realistically, though, NY doesn't have the money for this conversion. And more importantly, the driver needs to attend forward, not be carefully watching the dragging video.

> Note that NYC trains have just one conductor, AFAIK. The second person is the driver.

Sorry, that was lost in translation. By "conductor", I meant "driver". All the metro trains that I know have only one personnel on board, the driver.

Also, what do you mean by "dragging"? People or clothes getting stuck in a door? It seems to be very important, but I've never heard of this being a large problem in practice.

Dragging as in clothes, backpack, or an arm caught in a door, or someone falling in the crevice between the train and platform, or trying to "surf" the train, etc.

Not sure, but I think incidents happen with some regularity in NY. If you haven't seen it, it might be hard to visualize just how out-of-date and decrepit some of this infrastructure is. I never saw anyone injured, but I did see a couple of close calls that still make me shudder.

NY metro is a very real mess. Were it a uniform mess it had been already modernized, automated and in general de-messed.

NYC suffers from the fact that it's currently in a local minima and no one wants to put up the insane amounts of money that would be needed to modernize the system. Sure, some parts are getting modernized, but it just means you'll have the same mismatch of various parts in a big ball of track.

(The "tragedy of the anticommons" - https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/29/penn-stati... )

I have adopted this a couple of years ago after stumbling upon a video about this.

I work as a web architect. Whenever I am involved in a large production deployment, I don't just go through the checklists. I verbally call out each configuration/setting pointing my finger at the specific line on the screen.

Although, I don't call out as loud as the Japanese train staff are seen doing. It helped me with being more conscious and not oversee things or skip items in the checklist.

I started doing this anytime I have to do maintenance on systems. I point and call the name of the system and say “test” or “production” and other descriptive words like “web server” or “dmz” or whatever. We’re working on not requiring manual processes for routine deployments (We’ve automated some), but until then, every extra bit of safety we can add is well worth feeling weird for talking to your computer.

From one of my actual bash functions: https://github.com/majewsky/devenv/blob/5ceaf51d0e9ba4c66d8c...

Slightly shortened:

  if [ "${IS_PROD}" = 1 -a "${COMMAND}" = upgrade -a "${I_KNOW_THIS_IS_PROD:-}" != yes ]; then
    echo "Not upgrading a productive region without I_KNOW_THIS_IS_PROD=yes." >&2
    return 1
  fi

Same thing goes for rally drivers (or regular driving or bike riding): you drive to where you look at. If you want to stay on the road, look at the road.

That's the exact opposite. Professional drivers just look where they are trying to go (visualize their line or however you want to describe it) and the muscle memory follows.

The whole purpose of checklists, point and call, etc, etc, is to explicitly not use muscle memory and break that shortcut in the brain so that when something is wrong that one time in a thousand you actually notice.

I've found that when you are cornering on a motorcycle, you look to where you want to go, and the bike follows. If you try to think too much about where to place the motorcycle in the lane as you go, you end up looking at the edges of the lane. Inevitably the bike follows to the edge of the lane, which is not where you wanted to go, and can put you in a bad situation.

I can't explain why it works, but if I look down the road and around the corner as far as I can, the bike will follow the proper path. I don't even feel like I'm giving the steering any inputs. It's very strange.

They kept teaching this over and over in our safety class, but in the safety class, you aren't riding fast enough to notice. (mostly in a parking lot). When you are riding very slowly, the motorcycle tends to act more like a bicycle. But above like 20mph, the steering behavior changes. This I also don't really understand.

It's kind of the exact opposite of pointing, speaking and being deliberate.

Along with the scientific method, I am convinced that much of the modern world is made available because of checklists.

Some time ago we've visited the San Diego's USS Midway aircraft carrier (now museum).

There was an old air-force gentleman, explaining various bits, I don't remember everything, but this one:

So basically, he was asked why air pilots were asked to raise their hands (visibly) before taking off. And the explanation was, that this is to make sure that they are not fiddling with the plane, such that whoever works on the ropes (up front the plane), is safe, and can prepare the plane for taking off. Apparently, there were lots of hotshots, and you can't trust them :)

(Probably my memory is not serving me alright in all details, but it was something along the lines, if anyone can provide more detailed material - it'll be great! I would like to share it with my father too - an ex air military officer)

In a similar vein, when an F18 is launched from a carrier deck the pilot holds a handle rather than the joystick. This is because the flight computer manages the flight controls immediately after the catapult launch, and if the pilot was hands-on they would consciously or unconsciously provide conflicting inputs.

Stack overflow link with more info: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44714/what-happ...

This obviously works really well, but it sounds dehumanizing. I was wondering, is it right to dehumanize for the sake of running things smoothly? Or should it be the case that workers' humanity should be respected, and therefore sacrifice this world-class efficiency? You may think the latter is obviously right, but consider that the transportation system plays a part in powering the activity of civilization, so it's pretty important to have running well, to say the least.

The above is based off of it actually being dehumanizing. Maybe it isn't, and if you think so I want to hear why, but when I imagine seeing it and doing it, it feels very robotic. Imagine doing it for hours every day of every week, and having those around you expect to keep it up..

Why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?

I legitimately don’t see how it’s more dehumanizing than say, speech guidelines at retail or standards for how to use a tool in construction.

I pointed and called in a data center as we went through the checklist — because I wanted to do my job correctly, and used the best available technique to do so. That’s what being a professional others can depend on is: doing the silly technique so your work is correct.

I find embracing that much more liberating than being inefficient just so others might not judge my conduct from a position of ignorance. That strikes me as demeaning.

> Why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?

Robots can safely and efficiently perform their job. And do it way better than humans in some areas. Being a cog in a well-oiled machine that works efficiently sounds almost like a perfect example of dehumanization.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I interpret your general stance as: "Doing your job well has merit and value, so it shouldn't be viewed as dehumanizing." As a counterpoint, I bring up robots again: they do their job well, and that has merit and value. However, they have no humanity whatsoever. So what justifies your stance?

Just because a robot can do the same job doesn’t make an activity dehumanizing - you seem to merely be justifying a negative view.

You’re also ignoring that the point of pointing and calling is precisely to keep you from responding robotically if something deviates and to maintain your attention on active control/correction. It’s when you don’t point and call that you respond robotically. Your comment about “cog” gets to what I was calling demeaning: most of the jobs people refer to that way require intelligence and active response that machines can’t really master — they’re being done poorly if you’re just being a “cog in a machine”.

Robots are okay, but they’re not really useful for certain jobs (yet) because they’re either not smart enough, not flexible enough, or too costly to respond intelligently to deviations from the norm. Pointing and calling amplifies that human capacity.

Using motion and language to amplify our natural faculties for best effect at a social purpose sounds pretty human to me.

I’m curious, what activity do you view as not dehumanizing?

>Just because a robot can do the same job doesn’t make an activity dehumanizing - you seem to merely be justifying a negative view.

Well, you asked "why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?" as if it somehow the fact that those two qualities are meritorious precludes that characterization. That's why I brought up robots, because they are a clear counter example to your implicit claim. Also, to be fair, I did ask if I was wrong to assume that was indeed your claim...

>You’re also ignoring that the point of pointing and calling is precisely to keep you from responding robotically...

Actually, here you're conflating robotically with habitually or instinctively or carelessly. Consider that robots can respond to deviations as edge cases, in a manner analogous to conditional statements; such a response would have to be robotic, wouldn't it? Robots can very obviously handle deviations if they're programmed to, so that was a bad example.

> Using motion and language to amplify our natural faculties for best effect at a social purpose sounds pretty human to me.

I agree the creative use of this is human, but what I'm asserting is that this can be done to a dehumanizing end. Humanity created robots.

> I’m curious, what activity do you view as not dehumanizing?

Inherently human activities such as creating knowledge of other people.

Most of us probably do it without realizing.

Wallet Tap Keys Tap Phone Tap

This shows up in a few other places as well;

Casino card dealers do all sorts of meaningful gestures

Lifeguards do formal sign language things to each other

Amusement park ride operators

Astronauts and pilots do almost everything out loud in call-and-response

Casino card dealers also do some of those movements (hands spreading palms up or calling out to a pit boss that they're changing cash for chips) for the security team - to show that they're not trying to steal money.

I (and other climbers) do this as well when setting up. Calling out rope is correctly set in harness, has 5 points of loop, belayer has locked carabiner and set in their harness and called out ready to climb. It seems silly on the 500th time, but if someone rushes up and someone is not set could be a very dangerous situation

They also use this technique in Japan in stores - confirming the amount of money received, pointing to the money, to the cash register etc. I think it serves the same purpose, though it probably feels less awkward as it's directed towards another person (though people don't usually respond to the assistant talking).

A triumph of well-administered A/B testing combined with creative innovation in seeking out procedures to test

Does pointing-and-calling focus the mind onto the task by the same mechanism as pair programming should focus it onto the bigger picture?

So far, I've always regarded pair programming as a fad for people who can only think in conversation. But maybe there is a plausible mechanism behind it.

Simply keeping a log also helps. (See also lab notes.) The habit of writing down what you want to do, and summarizing what you have actually done is an enormously powerful one.

Coincidently, I just heard about this exact thing when listening to the audiobook Atomic Habits today.

Thanks

This is cool.

I went to Japan regularly for twenty years, and always saw this, but never thought about it.

Thanks for that!

Seems like a good system for commercial aviation when combined with checklists.

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