SOME PEOPLE ‘ATTRACT’ ACCIDENTS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 5

SOME PEOPLE ‘ATTRACT’ ACCIDENTS

[By

MICHAEL PHILLIPS,

in London.]

TJAVE YOU ever felt that you are always the unlucky one, the one on whose toe the hammer will invariably drop?

Then American scientist, Dr. Hans Hahn, of the Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, would like to know you. He estimates that about 25 per cent of all people are accident prone. He and his scientific colleagues have spent most of their working lives looking for people who are tailormade for mishaps. He is now convinced that he can unerringly pick out these people in industry, in the home, on the roads. And his long string of successes is little short of astounding. RECENT TEST Recently, he tested employees of a large refrigeration company in Chicago, and singled out a couple of workers from one shift as highly accident-prone. Not long afterwards, both men were severely injured when a large flywheel sheared a large machine guard which whipped into a crowd of workmen. No-one else was hurt. During a recent investigation for the New York police,

sceptical officials brought him 10 motorists, two of whom had long records of minor accidents. After testing the drivers, Dr. Hahn and his team correctly identified the two with long accident records. Their work has stirred great interest among leading insurance companies, railways, aircraft manufacturers and trade unions, each with special reasons for wanting to identify people prone to mishaps. THE SECRET How does Dr. Hahn do it? His battery of tests is deceptively simple, yet the results are revealing. In one simple, but dramatic test he takes his subject to a small stage and points over the edge to where he has strewn pieces of broken glass. “It will be most unpleasant to fall down on the broken glass,” he warns. Then the subjects are taken about 16 feet from the edge and blindfolded. Each subject must then walk toward the edge. One may grope fearfully with the first step. The next however, may walk boldly to the edge and only be prevented from falling over by two of the doctor’s assistants. What does this reveal? The super-cautious man, explains Dr. Hahn, is the neurotic driver who gropes through traffic and causes others to have accidents. “NO MARGIN” The carefree extrovert who walks boldly to the point of no return is the driver who “has absolutely no margin of safety for himself or others.” The normal safe driver, explains Dr. Hahn, will usually take three or four sure steps, then refuse to advance further, nearer the waiting disaster. Most children walk fearlessly to the brink, confident that something will save them. They would fall if not stopped. The professor says: “We believe that the margin of safety is a deeply rooted trait that shows accident proneness in the form of carelessness.” All his tests are devised to pinpoint a subject’s margin of safety, which may be affected by fatigue, strain and boredom. DANGER SIGNALS Thus some of the tests involve laboratory reproductions of the stresses a subject may find on the open road. In one test, subjects are given a button to press whenever a light flashes. Usually even the accident-prone subject responds well at first. But then a bell signal is substituted for the light, and

finally the two are mixed with no discernible pattern. Then the danger signals are speeded up. Many people tend to panic, try to outguess these signals or pack up in despair. In another deceptively simple test. Dr. Hahn asks his subjects to sit facing a large board on which 100 numbers are scattered at random. The subject is told to point out specific numbers. Only about one in 10,000 is able to find all the numbers in the five minutes given for the test. AVERAGE DRIVE The average, safe driver will find between 25 and 50 of these numbers, says the professor, because he is searching out and seeing only the important things, such as the other car approaching from the side road. The accident-prone driver will look at a dozen numbers before he finds the one he wants. This driver, says Dr. Hahn, will focus so strongly on one

quest that he misses all other signs.

He may see the car come out of the side road, but his interest in that car is so intense that he will miss a second car approaching headon. GROW TIRED In yet another test, the subject merely adds long columns of figures for an hour. Some subjects grow irritable with the constant adding. These people, says Dr. Hahn, are the ones who grow tired of analysing and reacting to constant danger signals in traffic—a blinking light, a hand signal, a whistle, a clanging bell, a changing light, a horn. Dr. Hahn's ultimate goal is to develop some form of therapy for those who attract disaster. “Accident proneness Is something you are born with,” he explains, “and it may be that the trait can be changed. It is certain that the majority of accidents which do happen to people are not accidents at alt .. .*