Perceptions should be rethought.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

I read the Risk Management piece "A Matter of Perception (Nov./Dec. 2004) and found the article a bit confounding.

It goes without saying that lifeguarding professionals need to be informed on the perceptual problems probed in the article. Griffiths and Moore deserve credit for bringing this issue to the foreground.

However, the article is written in a way that bewildered this reader. For example: "... the more focused guards become with their visual task of monitoring parts of the pool, the more susceptible they are to failing to notice events that are outside of this intense focus of attention."

Arguably, this demonstrates a flawed training strategy as much as an issue of perception. Why would management not include the bottom of the pool as part of the primary surveillance frame?

I also have reservations with the nod to detection technology as a means to shore up our perceptual shortcoming since technology does not necessarily eliminate known risks but merely displaces them. Risk analysts recognize technology creates two new error forms: overconfidence in a new design, the defects of which remain hidden until some new disaster occurs, and the failure to observe repeated rituals that safe operation of technology entails.

Since nothing is perfect, there will be technological failures. Unfortunately, technology failures tend to lack real world signals--such as smoke, smell, noise and ...