Hey, Pay Attention! : Zoning Out Can Be Hazardous to Your Health, Safety Expert Says

We’ve all been way out there.

And most of us have returned to planet Earth with a thud to tell the tale.

Take the fire battalion chief who drove himself 15 miles out of the way to a house he hadn’t lived in for six months. Or the woman who locked the keys in the car at the airport--with the motor running--when she picked up her mother-in-law.

Even the father who drove off, forgetting that his baby was in a car seat on the top of the car. (The baby was unhurt.)

And who hasn’t “come to” somewhere down the road from their freeway off-ramp.

While spacing out may be the great urban coping mechanism, being on inner cruise control can be an occupational hazard even if the most dangerous part of your job is the prospect of falling out of your chair.

And if you’re a police officer or firefighter, it can be a matter of life or death.

“To be comfortable can kill you,” Arizona safety expert Chas Harral said. “We have to go there to recharge. We go there at inopportune times.’

That’s why Harral spent the week in Santa Monica, teaching police officers, firefighters and paramedics how to stay on their toes in a workshop that offered techniques applicable to all of us urban space cadets.

Not surprisingly, it was the city’s Risk Management Division, which processes liability claims against the city, including police shootings, that co-sponsored the program with the police and fire departments. They shared the cost of Harral’s $6,000 fee and $600 expense allowance.

“From our slant, it will enhance liability protection and employee protection concerning the use of firearms,’ said Tom Phillips, manager of the division.

Harral, a flight instructor with a background in radio announcing and drama, has taught his seminar in 59 cities in 34 states to everyone from bank tellers to jet pilots.

He calls his program the “Color Code System for Total Control,” in which four colors represent four stages of awareness, three of which have pitfalls.

They range from the aforementioned spacing out, which he dubs Condition White, to a full adrenaline-rush stage called Condition Red. In between are the desirable Condition Yellow, a relaxed self-awareness stage at which nothing gets past you, and Condition Orange.

Orange is a problematic stage during which, under threat, a person is likely to revert to an automatic pattern of behavior that is especially dangerous for police officers and firefighters.

“What goes in first is going to come out first,” Harral says about Orange. “You play the way you are trained.”

To illustrate, he told his audience of a California Highway Patrol officer who was shot to death as he methodically reloaded all six chambers of his revolver, instead of putting in one or two bullets and shooting back.

“Why did he do that?” Harral said it was because the officer was trained at the rifle range to completely reload before shooting and under threat he unthinkingly reverted to his training.

In the same vein, Harral told the audience, it is common for police officers to die with their empty bullet casings in their pocket or hand--which means they took precious time to retrieve them from the ground while under fire.

Harral says that knowing this happens can be addressed through organized retraining or by rethinking things yourself. One way is by figuring out a course of action before something happens.

“Composure can be learned,” Harral said, “Think tactically.”

For example, a person concerned about a bump-and-rob crime could decide in advance not to get out of the car if rear-ended in a lonely spot late at night. This runs counter to the programmed instinct to jump out of the car and exchange insurance information.

Harral, 53, does not merely lecture; he actually simulates the four conditions through anecdote, performance and audio aids. In the case of Condition Red, he plays a tape of a paramedic calmly but firmly directing a frantic baby-sitter in CPR, which she used to restart a child’s breathing before a paramedic team arrived.

Other characteristics of Condition Red, he said, are the ability to focus intently on a goal, and denial. Both can bode trouble.

Harral reels off horror stories: A firetruck speeding toward a fire is smashed by a train, despite blaring whistles and horns from the train. The accident happened, he suggests, because the firefighter driving the truck was so preoccupied with getting to the fire that he was deaf to warnings that could have awakened the dead.

And to illustrate the danger of denial, Harral recounted the story of a bank teller who received a note from a robber demanding all the money in a paper sack.

She wrote back, “No!” And when the robber showed a gun and pointed again to his note demanding money, she pointed to her note saying, “No!’

“Why not?” the frustrated crook finally yelled out.

“I don’t have a paper bag,” she answered, logically but foolishly. (In this case, Harral added, the robber fled.)

Harral uses a gimmick to remind people to be aware: a yellow triangular sticker that he said will serve to jog people back from their personal Twilight Zones.

He recommends putting it on the rearview mirror of the car or on the front door as a reminder not to open it unless you know who’s there. One student immediately put them on all the family credit cards as a kind of a wake-up-you’re-spending-money call, Harral said.

Harral’s key message, however, is to stay out of Condition White. In his Santa Monica demonstration, he nearly gave everyone a heart attack showing why.

At first he lulled the crowd by painting a word picture of a roaring fire, a glass of wine and thou. Just as the audience was way out in Condition White-land, Harral jolted them back with a scream.

Then he announced: “With an AK-47 I could have killed everyone in this room. . . . The vast number of crime victims are taken by surprise.

“Do crooks know about Condition White?’ he asked. “Of course they do.”

He said research with prisoners consistently shows that most of them target the same victims when shown a videotape of people walking down the street. Alert people in Condition Yellow are passed by for those easier marks who are not paying attention, Harral said.

Police officers are far from exempt, he said; 12% of officers who die in the line of duty are killed during “routine” traffic stops that they have approached in Condition White, not Yellow.

To them, Harral recommends developing the habit of touching the left rear bumper of the violator’s car. Not only does it leave prints if something goes awry, it serves as an anchoring device to bring the officer back to reality.

Though Harral acknowledges that the yellow triangles can lose their meaning over time, he said that with reinforcement, the training can last a lifetime.

It would have come in handy for veteran sea captain E. J. Smith.

“I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea (as) uneventful,” Smith wrote in a memoir. “I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”

Smith, Harral said, was “cruising for a bruising.” After writing the above passage, he assumed command of the Titanic.