Check It Once, Check It Twice

How comfortable would you be if the pilots flying the next aircraft you may be sitting on did not use a checklist?  How about the bus driver on that Greyhound bus?  Or what about driving with me in our RV?

Countless accidents have taken place because checklists were either not used or used incorrectly.  The repetitive nature of many of the tasks leads to a false sense that memorizing the steps is all that is required.  Now you may wonder why I am drawing a similarity between checklists for an aircraft, a commercial bus, and those to drive an RV.

Checklists are used for all kinds of things, some routine and some for emergencies.  It is obvious you can’t just pull over in an aircraft while you sort out what to do next in an emergency, so thorough checklists provide a solid foundation for safely operating whatever it is the checklist is designed to help you manage.  It is also obvious, in almost all cases in an RV, you can safely pull over to the side of the road to resolve whatever event just popped up.  However, if the event is a brake failure during a three mile long steep descending grade, you will have to deal with the outcome on your own, all the while remembering you became distracted during your morning checks and now can’t remember if you checked the brakes or not.  The fact remains however, if you use a checklist to positively check off those critical items before you depart you will minimize the chances of something happening that could ruin your day.

When I took the driver training course in Brantford for my Class D licence I was provided a checklist comprised of twenty-three items that are required to be checked each day at the start of every trip on every commercial vehicle that operates in Ontario.  This is an Ontario Regulation for every commercial vehicle, and I suspect other jurisdictions use a similar checklist.  It includes items such as the brakes, lights, steering, suspension, tires, wheels, load securement and so on.  Any driver finding a minor defect on any topic is allowed to drive the vehicle, but must record the defect in a log and report it to their company dispatch before departure.  Any driver finding a major defect must keep the vehicle parked until the item is resolved.  Given the complexity of the checklist, the inclement weather conditions that may be present during the period when checks are carried out, and the pressure to get on the road by some, I am not sure how many vehicles are thoroughly inspected each day.  You can see why there are so many government inspection stations across the country.  When I studied the checklist for my driving test, I learned a number of new things and so made a point of incorporating the appropriate items into our pre-existing checklist.

In our case, this checklist is not just for mechanical items, it is also to make sure the inside of the coach is safe and secure as well.  To that end, Patty has items she checks and I have mine.  As new RV’ers, before we incorporated some of these items on our checklist, we left the fridge door unlocked, forgot to pick up all the loose items from the floor before retracting the slides, and forgot to secure the shower wand.  Now, before we start the coach each trip we go through the checklist from top to bottom and cross check each other to ensure we have not missed anything.  The value in doing this cannot be stated enough.

While we were on the training course at Spartan there was an entire segment dedicated to checking certain components before use, as there are a number of items required to be checked before each departure.  A number of participants in the class asked if it was really meant to do these on each departure, so it was clear to me some people do not check things to the extent they should.

When we had the boat in Florida we developed a shared checklist that we could run down on our iPads and ‘check off’ the items as they were completed.  I am sure PC’s have similar features, but we use the Notes app on our iPads.  It is a powerful app and there are probably things in it that I am not using as much as I could, but we have developed a bullet checklist for Pre-Departure with eight topics and a total of 99 entries as of this writing.  I modify it from time to time as we find something else to add, or change the position of an item in the list because of the logic sequence.

Pre-Departure Checklist Extract

You may still ask why we do this because the repetition of these tasks imprints on your memory and you should be able to do them without a checklist.  True enough to an extent.  After nine months of operating this coach I can say fairly strongly that I know the items off the top of my head.  However, without a checklist to validate, complacency becomes the norm and that is when something will be missed.

We still have a lot to learn about driving a vehicle like ours and I want to eliminate as many variables as possible that could turn a good day into a bad one.  So, we will continue to work our checklists and modify them as we identify different things that need to be validated before we depart.

Safe driving to everyone and thanks for reading.