It is never just any day

We drive a car without thinking that we have in our hands a machine capable of killing. We turn on the turn signal, change lanes, and go through a traffic light with the naturalness of someone doing a household chore. Repetition makes us forget its importance. We normalize what we do every day.

I have thought about it, while listening to the conversations between the Atocha control center and the train drivers of the trains that crashed in Urda. The investigation will have to determine responsibilities and it would be imprudent to anticipate the conclusions. But we know some facts. The failure of the security system automatically stopped six trains and the control center had to manage their return to circulation. One of them, the Iryo, remained stopped while another train received authorization to resume circulation.

I was struck by both what was said and the way it was said. The Iryo train driver communicated that she remained stopped because she could not restart the system. From Atocha they replied that, if she had problems, she should call back. Then it is heard internally: "Seriously, man". The expression was not addressed to the train driver and, by itself, it proves nothing. But the whole conveys an informality difficult to reconcile with the gravity of what was being managed. To me, that response produced a disturbing feeling of distance regarding the gravity of the situation. It is, I insist, a personal perception.

It was not an administrative incident. There were hundreds of people inside trains capable of traveling at high speed. Each instruction could protect their lives or put them in danger. Precisely for this reason, I find it so disconcerting to hear doubts, vagueness, and a tone that does not seem to correspond to the significance of that moment.

Sociologist Diane Vaughan coined the concept "normalization of deviance" when studying the Challenger space shuttle accident. The exceptional becomes routine.

This phenomenon affects railway controllers, pilots, doctors, or those in charge of a nuclear power plant. And also all of us. The driver who looks at their mobile for a few seconds because nothing has ever happened. The executive who signs without checking because it has always been done that way. The technician who postpones a check, the manager who tolerates an exception, or anyone who gives an instruction without ensuring it has been understood.

We cannot live in terror for every daily decision. But neither should we allow habit to make us forget what we have in our hands. For the victims and their families, that Wednesday will never be just any day. Perhaps the best way to respect them is to remember that, in certain activities, no day should ever be just any day.