yadda yadda yadda

What I was referring to re the pack sets is that they have killed crew the members' acquisition of a sense of and being keyed into their surroundings, to develop the capability of being aware of, even subconsciously, of what's going on surrounding them at any given time. This is a thing along the lines of combat veterans' automatically dropping to the ground when a bullet whizzes by, even before their their brain can react to the sound the bullet makes. It's the same sort of thing as responding automatically to slight movements detected by peripheral vision, and peripheral vision is neurologically more sensitive to these slight movements than the central part of the visual field.

Dropping when the bullet whizzes by is a matter of training the lower parts in the hierarchy of the nervous system, no different than playing practicing the piano (or any other musical instrument). Peripheral vision sensitivity is an evolutionary development related to the lion stealthily creeping up through the grass, which your lower nervous system then learns to use to prevent your from becoming dinner.

As the old heads (1930s-1940s) always said "it's the flat car rolling along at about 1 mph after dark which will get you" (and that flatcar has no pack set nor knows word one about job briefings).

One of the things I was concerned with in my student fireman's days was missing slow order and gang flags. After a bit of practice and drill, they began standing out like sore thumbs.

What those PTC screens do is distract too much from the real world. I recently bought a new car, which came with all the (politically correct) bluetooth stuff for hands off cell phone use. But this is completely canceled out by the touch screen that you have to look at for selecting the radio function and then changing the channels. You have to take your eyes off the road and look at it because there are no tactile points of reference like the old mechanical pushbuttons. Then there's the heater/AC control: simple to turn on, but you have to look at the control panel and hunt around for the stop button, which is located in a rather awkward and illogical place.

More and more bells and whistles do not automatically safety make.