Why Do We Tend to Make Deadly Decisions?

In high-stakes environments, even minor oversights can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

On May 10, 2011, 60 kilometres south of Gothenburg, a routine pressure test at Sweden’s largest nuclear reactor, Ringhals, turned catastrophic. During the test a severe fire broke out, leading to one of Vattenfall’s costliest shutdowns in history. The fire caused extensive damage and required seven months to clean up, costing the company SEK 1.8 billion (€158 million). Astonishingly, this disaster was triggered by a simple household item that had been left on the premises: a wet vacuum cleaner had short-circuited.

This costly accident underscores the serious consequences that human factors like stress, miscommunication, fatigue, and complacency can have in the workplace. It also highlights that even the best procedures and policies are vulnerable to human error. Often, these issues stem from honest mistakes or entrenched workplace cultures where confirmation bias leads to downplaying potential dangers simply because they haven’t occurred frequently.

Mixed into this human dynamic is that safety is always a moving target. Further complicated by the fact that roughly 20% of the industry changes jobs each year. This constant influx of new cultures, languages, hierarchies, operations, and perspectives continually reshapes the workplace, making it challenging to maintain consistent safety standards.

I’ve been in the safety field for over a decade, and many of the things I’ve observed boil down to these three insights:

• Repetition: Consistent actions over time become habits.
• Social Learning: Individuals adopt behaviours by mimicking others.
• Reinforcement: Behaviours are solidified through either rewards or consequences.

One of the greatest thinkers of modern times, Daniel Kahneman, expounded on these ideas. The Nobel Prize winner authored the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow and helped illuminate the interplay between logic and intuition, revealing two modes of thinking:

System One, which is fast, instinctive, and emotional, and System Two, which is slower, more deliberative, and logical.

Consider how often you rely on System One versus System Two in approaching your daily life. Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology indicates that habits — part of System One thinking — account for about 45% of our daily behaviours.

We are social creatures by nature, and much of our behaviour involves mimicking others. These actions play a crucial role in shaping workplace practices.

People also often underestimate the consequences of their actions, justifying risky behaviours with thoughts like, “I’ve done this routine countless times before, so it should be fine,” or conforming because “everyone else does it.”

This reliance and defaulting to System One thinking conserves energy, as engaging in critical thinking for every decision would be too time-consuming and energy-intensive. Yet it at times can put you in harms way.

For instance, we had a client operating a hydraulic press that could exert thousands of tons of force. It was observed that individuals were walking directly through the path of the press. Despite the significant risks, workers chose to take this route, likely to make their workday easier. In such scenarios, risk-taking may have become routine, highlighting the importance of understanding and addressing the complex nuances of human behaviour when it comes to safety. Simply utalising technological solutions isn't enough.

We deal in AI-monitored environments and offer technology that provides visual context for clients. This context is crucial because people generally act in ways that make sense to them. By understanding this context, it allows us to have a much better chance of influencing workers when addressing safety issues rather than just treating them like ones and zeroes. As part of this, we use heat maps and track trails to know where people are moving, where they are mostly crossing, and where their natural movements are.

Our goal isn’t to eliminate System One thinking; we value people and their role in shaping workplace culture and satisfaction — but to monitor behaviours that can lead to danger.

As Daniel Kahneman wisely says, “We can be blind to the obvious, but we are also blind to our blindness.”

By recognizing, understanding and addressing these blind spots in human behaviour, we can work towards reducing the risk of deadly decisions and create safer, more efficient workplaces.

Lamin Faye

CEO & Co-founder, Buddywise