Technology impacts on safety and decision making over time in marine transportation

Technology has often been introduced to dampen risk in marine transportation systems and to enhance safety. As technology in these systems becomes more complex, and requirements for its deployment and use become pervasive, understanding the impacts of technology introduction on users’ attitudes toward and behaviour with technology is increasingly important. As a result, this study addresses several questions of interest: what is the impact of new technology on user decision performance, decision processes, and perceptions of technology? How does the influence of technology on decision performance and processes change over time? Finally, how do these influences relate to safety? The paper begins with an overview of technology, safety, and risk in marine transportation. Different theories that explain how people interact with technology, how people come to accept and use technology, and how those interactions might be expected to manifest in safety-critical systems are then explored. The research model derived from these theories is then presented, followed by an empirical evaluation of the model using the automatic identification system (AIS), in one safety-critical system, marine transportation. The results of the evaluation and the implications for safety in marine transportation follow, and the paper concludes with a description of future work.