From Cockpits to Car Keys: How Aviation Safety Science Made Flying Safer - and What Roads Can Learn

Commercial aviation was not always the safest form of transport.

In the 1960s and 1970s, accident investigations repeatedly showed a troubling pattern: aircraft were mechanically sound, pilots were technically competent - and yet catastrophic accidents still occurred.

The cause was rarely a lack of stick-and-rudder skill.

It was human factors.

Today, commercial aviation is one of the safest transport systems in the world. That transformation did not happen by accident. It happened because the industry stopped blaming individuals and started understanding how humans actually think, decide, and behave under pressure.

Human Factors DRIVE™ applies that same science to the road.

When Skill Wasn’t the Problem

By the late 20th century, aviation accident investigation bodies such as the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) were identifying recurring themes:

Breakdown in communication
Poor workload management
Decision-making under time pressure
Overconfidence or continuation bias
Fatigue
Loss of situational awareness
Research by Helmreich and colleagues (1999) demonstrated that many major accidents involved breakdowns in crew coordination rather than technical incompetence. This led to the development of Crew Resource Management (CRM) - structured training designed to improve decision-making, communication, and threat management.

Later, Threat and Error Management (TEM) frameworks formalised how crews anticipate risk, trap errors early, and recover safely (Maurino et al., 1995).

The result?

A sustained and measurable reduction in accident rates despite dramatic growth in global air traffic (ICAO, 2022).

The system changed because training changed.

The Shift: From Blame to Behaviour

James Reason’s “Swiss Cheese Model” (Reason, 1990) reframed accidents not as single mistakes, but as alignments of latent conditions and human vulnerabilities.

In aviation, this meant:

Teaching pilots how stress narrows attention
Training decision-making models (e.g., DECIDE, FORDEC)
Practising error recovery
Embedding structured briefings and reviews
Normalising the discussion of human limitations
Human factors became core, not optional.

And the safety culture improved accordingly.

Now Compare This to the Road

Road transport tells a different story.

In the UK, the Department for Transport reports that human factors contribute to the vast majority of collisions. The 2022 Reported Road Casualties Great Britain data shows that driver or rider error or reaction was a contributory factor in the majority of collisions (DfT, 2023).

Common factors include:

Failure to look properly
Misjudgement of another vehicle’s path or speed
Loss of control
Distraction
Impairment or fatigue
These are not steering failures.

They are cognitive failures.

Similarly, DVSA data show that common driving test failures include observation at junctions, mirrors before manoeuvres, and response to hazards - again, primarily attention and decision-making issues rather than mechanical inability.

In other words:

We train drivers to operate a vehicle.

We do not systematically train them to manage their own cognitive limitations.

The Missing Piece: Human Factors for Everyday Drivers

Aviation recognised decades ago that:

Technical skill is necessary - but not sufficient.

Driving education still focuses heavily on manoeuvres, control, and road rules. These are essential. But they do not directly address:

Cognitive overload
Emotional regulation under pressure
Continuation bias (“I’ll just go”)
Risk normalisation
Fatigue effects
Stress-induced narrowing of attention
Peer-reviewed road safety research consistently shows that young drivers in particular are more vulnerable to risk-taking, overconfidence, and peer influence (McCartt et al., 2009; Scott-Parker et al., 2013).

Graduated Driver Licensing systems mitigate some of this risk structurally - but they do not explicitly teach cognitive strategies.

In aviation, we do.

What Aviation Did Differently

Aviation safety improved because it:

Accepted human limitation as normal
Built training around predictable vulnerabilities
Standardised decision-making frameworks
Embedded reflection and review
Treated safety as a system, not just an individual responsibility
Importantly, aviation did not wait for pilots to “gain experience” to learn these lessons.

They are taught early.

Applying Aviation-Grade Thinking™ to the Road

Human Factors DRIVE™ translates core aviation human factors principles into everyday driving contexts:

Situational awareness and scanning
Workload management
Anticipating threats before they escalate
Emotional regulation under pressure
Decision-making when uncertain
Recovery after small mistakes
This is not about turning drivers into pilots.

It is about giving drivers the cognitive tools aviation has used for decades to reduce risk.

The aim is simple:

Help drivers stay calm, spot risk earlier, and make better decisions when it matters most.

Why This Matters Now

In Great Britain, the Department for Transport has highlighted that ‘one in 5 new drivers crashes within their first year on the road’ in its official announcement on exploring graduated driver licensing (Department for Transport 2019).

Young drivers remain disproportionately represented in serious collisions.

If we accept that most collisions involve human factors, then improving cognitive and behavioural skills is not optional - it is central.

Aviation did not become safer because aircraft became perfect.

It became safer because humans were trained better.

The road environment is less controlled than the cockpit. Distractions are constant. Emotional triggers are frequent. Time pressure is common.

That makes human factors even more important.

Evidence-Based, Not Opinion-Based

Human Factors DRIVE™ is grounded in:

Established human factors theory (Reason, 1990)
Crew Resource Management research (Helmreich et al., 1999)
Threat and Error Management models (Maurino et al., 1995)
Road safety psychology literature (McCartt et al., 2009; Scott-Parker et al., 2013)
UK Department for Transport collision data
This is not generic driver advice.

It is applied safety science.

From Aviation to Everyday Life

For decades, aviation has turned fatal accidents into structured learning.

Young drivers deserve the same safety culture.

By learning to think like a pilot - anticipating risk, managing workload, staying calm under pressure - drivers can reduce avoidable risk on the road.

Because most crashes are not caused by a lack of steering skill.

They happen in moments of distraction, pressure, fatigue, or rushed decisions.

That is exactly where human factors training works.

References

Department for Transport. (2019, July 18). Government looks at steps to make new drivers safer. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-looks-at-steps-to-make-new-drivers-safer

Department for Transport (2023). Reported Road Casualties Great Britain.
ICAO (2022). Safety Report.

Helmreich, R. L., Merritt, A. C., & Wilhelm, J. A. (1999). The evolution of Crew Resource Management training. International Journal of Aviation Psychology.

Maurino, D., Reason, J., Johnston, N., & Lee, R. (1995). Beyond Aviation Human Factors.

Reason, J. (1990). Human Error. Cambridge University Press.

McCartt, A. T., Teoh, E. R., Fields, M., Braitman, K. A., & Hellinga, L. A. (2009). Graduated driver licensing and fatal crashes of teenage drivers. Journal of Safety Research.

Scott-Parker, B., Watson, B., King, M. J., & Hyde, M. K. (2013). A further exploration of sensation seeking propensity, reward sensitivity, depression, anxiety, and the risky behaviour of young novice drivers. Accident Analysis & Prevention.