Experimental study on the adverse effects of having excessive safety rules

NAKANOWATARI Hiroyuki¹, TAKAHASHI Makoto², and WAKABAYASHI Toshio³

1. Department of Quantum Science and Energy Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8579 Japan (hiroyuki.nakanowatari@luke.qse.tohoku.ac.jp)
2. Department of Quantum Science and Energy Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8579 Japan (makoto.takahashi@qse.tohoku.ac.jp)
3. Department of Quantum Science and Energy Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8579 Japan (toshio.wakabayashi@qse.tohoku.ac.jp)

Abstract: Operating and maintenance personnel are required to follow a large number of rules, with a higher level of safety maintained by appropriately following the rules. Although following the rules is quite important, incidents attributable to the erroneous interpretation of rules have not been eliminated. Furthermore, where the number of rules has increased rapidly, the task of following the rules becomes quite difficult. Although most working personnel in the field would agree that the number of rules seems excessive, no evidence has been provided to show that such an excessive number of rules for safety may have adverse effects. In the present study, cognitive experiments have been performed to show that excessive quantities of rules can result in degraded safety performance, and that task performance is affected by how rules are presented.
Keyword: rules; regulation; adverse effects