When one thinks about miscommunication, what comes to mind? The occurrence is likely something minor or something that may have even caused a heated argument between significant others. It is safe to say that when we think about miscommunication, we do not think of a fatal event where that breakdown in communication was the reason for loss of life. But for an April 2016 Amtrak train crash near Chester, Pennsylvania, that was exactly what happened.
Lesson commentary (2019) tells us that communication is a coding and decoding system in its very basic structure. The process of communication starts with a sender who encodes a message to then be decoded by the receiver. Then the receiver sends feedback, and the process begins again. Errors in communication occur at the encoding and decoding stages of the process, and these errors are noise or bias (Pennsylvania, 2019). In the case of the Amtrak train crash, investigators do not yet know exactly what happened, so we do not know whether the error in communication occurred at the encoding or decoding stage.
No matter where the miscommunication happened, the results were deadly. The Amtrak train going 88 miles per hour collided into a backhoe performing maintenance after the engineer had already put on the emergency brakes, immediately killing the backhoe operator and his supervisor. The investigation, being completed by the National Transportation Safety Board, preliminarily showed that not only did the train operator test positive for marijuana on the day of the crash, an interview with a day shift foreman showed that “there had been confusion in the handoff from a night foreman about whether the track had been cleared for traffic,” (Chokshi, 2017, January 27).
Because of this miscommunication and confusion, two people lost their lives that morning and over 40 others were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment. While the occurrences of miscommunication in our lives are not usually this severe, it is important to remember that errors in communication can have dangerous consequences, even deadly ones.
References
Chokshi, N. (2017, January 27). Inquiry into fatal Amtrak crash reveals error in communication. Retrieved September 21, 2019, from
Pennsylvania State University. (2019). Defining communication. Retrieved September 21, 2019, from
https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026964
dxw56 says
Hello Abagayle. I found your post on miscommunication thoughtful. It is simple to see where miscommunication plays out in the workplace in emails (for example) but there are many workplaces where an error in communication could end in the loss of someone’s life.
Additionally, when I was reading the lesson about error in communication I found it interesting that even though the advances in technology have made our jobs easier in many ways, they have also added to miscommunication. In my current profession we have added a group messaging app as a form of communication in addition to already using emails and texts. While this is an easier way for all of us to communicate, I have to wonder if there will be increased instances of miscommunication, such as not understanding someone’s tone. This would be an example of a decoding error which means there was an error during the the process of understanding the message (PSU 2019).
Works Cited
Pennsylvania State University (2019). Leadership in Global Context–OLEAD 410. Defining Communication, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved September 23, 2019 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026964