Comment by tomatowurst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomatowurst | Hacker News Reader

This article is laughable, coming from someone who has lived in Japan, there are lot of superficial processes and forms that the society knows is useless but individuals are powerless to stop it, for instance the idea that coordinated hand eye movement of pointing is contributing to safety, situational awareness (one rail worker was caught playing mobile games and that's just one), its more of a top to bottom bureaucrat culture and thinking. Ton of rail systems/workers outside Japan have impeccable track record too without the stupid pointing gestures.

Japan's strength comes from following the rule to the letter but it also comes with the ridiculous overheads that puts downward pressure on productivity.

I'm sure some westerner will gawk at anything novel, for instance the usage of fax machine and the claim that its secure from vulnerabilities. Yes, paper can't get hacked but the overall disadvantage slows down Japan Inc., and its entering now the 40th year of stagnation and unlikely to improve going forward. In fact, it's already being outclassed by its neighbors who adopted bandwidth and digitization at the turn of the millennia.

This article has absolutely no merit whatsoever, the same attitude can be applied to Japan's worse problems like ijime culture over the slightest things.

The general term is 'pointing and calling' and it is actually used worldwide[0]

As with many things, the action is not designed to eliminate abject non participation but to deal with 'unthinking errors' like wrong site surgeries or taking off without clearance. This article may strike you as gawking but the principle is sound.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling#:~:text=I....

> This article has absolutely no merit whatsoever, the same attitude can be applied to Japan's worse problems like ijime culture over the slightest things.

You assert.

Other commentators here describe that they use this system (some invent it for themselves)

Why do you think:

> Japan's strength comes from following the rule to the letter but it also comes with the ridiculous overheads that puts downward pressure on productivity.

Any reasons?

> for instance the idea that coordinated hand eye movement of pointing is contributing to safety

We have a lot of human factors research showing that proper checklist use involves pointing (and ideally vocalization of the checklist item), resulting in a significant reduction of inadvertent omissions.

It's just way too easy to accidentally get into the rhythm of saying checklist items without doing them, and having to point keeps your attention focused on the item.

Finger-on-instrument-to-point is becoming very common in air transport. It's not universal in rail culture in countries other than Japan, but would probably further reduce errors (as you point out, rail is already very, very safe at baseline). Indeed, the MTA evidence mentioned in the article suggests this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com