Human Error

The calls have been, as the saying goes, questionable. In San Francisco, the New York Giants lost a playoff game when, after a bad snap on the last play of the game, a field goal attempt, the holder improvised a pass. The Giants were called for an illegal man downfield, and the game was over. As the NFL acknowledged, there should also have been a pass interference call against the San Francisco 49ers, and the down should have been replayed. In Nashville, in sudden death overtime, the Tennessee Titans missed a field goal.

Operator error has been cited for the release Feb. 17 of a thick black cloud of smoke from Gloucester County's new trash incinerator in West Deptford Township. The 10-minute emission bypassed the facility's pollution scrubbers and followed both mechanical and human failures, said Kevin Stickney, a spokesman for Wheelabrator Inc. of Danvers, Mass., operator of the incinerator. A report on the content and possible health effects of the emission will not be available until later this week, said Jeanine Mosley, a spokeswoman with the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Human error is likely the cause of a SEPTA train accident yesterday that sent nine people to the hospital and delayed commuters for much of the morning, SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said. A southbound work train struck the rear of a stopped R1 Airport train about 4:40 a.m. just southwest of 10th and Wagner Streets, near the Fern Rock station. Five crew members were on the work train, and 16 passengers and two crew members were on the commuter train. All the injured - four on the work train and five on the commuter train - were treated at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

Human error was responsible for the pre-Christmas computer problem at Philadelphia National Bank that prevented proper posting of automatic deposits and withdrawals for about 9,000 customers, according to bank officials. A programmer handling a routine procedure inadvertently entered incorrect data and caused the computer to fail to post $6 million, mostly in automatic payroll deposits, to customer accounts, according to Bob Gilmore, executive vice president of CoreStates Financial Corp.

A British Airways jumbo jet and a Scandinavian Airlines System jet nearly collided over this Atlantic island, and an Icelandic air-control official said yesterday that human error was at fault. Peter Einarsson, head of Icelandic Air Control, said that "a series of human mistakes" led to the planes' passing within about 200 feet of each other Monday. Almost 600 people were aboard the two planes. SAS spokeswoman Monika Backlund said in Stockholm that the British Airways Boeing 747 and the Scandinavian DC-8 were flying in the same air corridor at the same altitude - 33,000 feet - over southwestern Iceland.

Fifteen employees of Mercy Catholic Medical Center's Fitzgerald Division in Darby were either suspended or placed on probation yesterday following recent revelations of three accidental deaths of patients this year. The disciplinary action, taken in response to two of the deaths, was one of several steps announced by chief executive officer Plato Marinakos yesterday in an attempt to bolster public confidence in the Delaware County hospital. Marinakos said 10 of those disciplined were pharmacists or their assistants involved in the death of 5-month-old Tyhisha Smith of West Philadelphia.

Human error appears to have been the likeliest cause of a rare, head-on crash yesterday between two SEPTA Regional Rail trains traveling through a Montgomery County neighborhood. There appeared to have been no mechanical or signal failures behind the mid-afternoon crash that injured about 30 people in Abington Township, SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said. Most of the injuries were described as minor; none appeared to be life-threatening. The four-car trains crashed shortly before 3 p.m. on a single-track section of the R2 Warminster line, between the Roslyn and Crestmont Stations.

Registered voters in at least three voting districts in Moorestown and Florence Township were mailed the wrong sample ballots due to malfunctioning equipment at a printing plant, Burlington County Clerk Michael Conda said yesterday. The county's sample ballots were mailed out a week ago, but Conda said he did not get word until yesterday that voter information had been mixed up. Residents in at least two Moorestown districts were mailed Pemberton Township ballots, and voters in at least one Florence Township district got Medford's sample ballot, Conda said.

The city Department of Licenses and Inspections thinks it has finally gotten to the bottom of what caused a Cottman Avenue rowhouse to collapse and apparently damage seven other dwellings five weeks ago. An L&I report distributed to residents in the 3300 block of Cottman Avenue last night blamed the collapse on an engineering blunder by a contractor who was repairing damage left after the house next door collapsed in July. The contractor dug a trench too close to the stone foundation wall at 3321 Cottman Ave., triggering the collapse of that building, wrote Albert Tantala, a private engineer hired by the city.

SEPTA investigators are looking at both human error and mechanical malfunction as a possible cause for the collision between two rush-hour Regional Rail trains in a tunnel under Center City, an agency spokesman said yesterday. A total of 32 people were injured in the incident about 5 p.m. Monday, eight of them SEPTA employees, said spokesman Gary Fairfax. None of the injuries was life-threatening. Between 900 and 1,100 people were on the two trains when the R6 to Norristown was rear-ended by an R5 to Doylestown outside the Market East Station, Fairfax said.

VILLANOVA'S basketball team - which has no seniors and five freshmen - is 4-2, after losing two of three in the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif. The losses were to Saint Louis (6-0) by 12 points in the second round on Friday and by one to Santa Clara (4-2) in Sunday's third-place game. But it was the way they went down against Steve Nash's alma mater that caused some head-shaking. The Wildcats, after trailing by eight three times in the first half, went ahead by nine with 3 1/2 minutes left.

My daughter was nearly 2 when her first full sentence - its syntax disheveled but the meaning clear - tumbled from her lips. We were expecting company that night, a group of friends with whom we'd been sharing weekly dinners since before Sasha was born. "Friends come house Sasha now?" she queried. And while her words may have sounded like a clumsy translation from a Far Eastern language, I cherished them as a scrap of found poetry. Oh yes, my sweet; friends come house Sasha any minute now. I miss those toddler days, with their unpredictable kinks of speech.

The investigation into the police department's bad-data-spewing Breathalyzer machines has found that 2,126 drunken-driving cases were affected, with 1,459 of those defendants able to request new trials, the district attorney announced yesterday. "This was an unfortunate case of human error," Philadelphia D.A. Seth Williams said in a statement. "But we identified it and have started the process of correcting any mistakes that were made. And the hardworking members of my office . . . have put in countless hours to make sure this doesn't happen again," added Williams, whose office conducted a six-week investigation.

AS A RECOVERING career criminal, I no longer choose a life of crime. And as a mentor to troubled youth, I let them know that the difference between spending your life in a jail cell or on a college campus (or in a reputable profession) is one bad decision. I encourage the youth with alternatives to a criminal lifestyle and prison by first thinking about the benefits and consequences of their actions before they act, and seeking a college education, or at least some type of vocation. So why is the governor encouraging the youth of Pennsylvania with his 50 percent cut in state support for higher education?

If the three bomb-sniffing pooches who failed an annual recertification test last year at the airport could talk, they would probably say, "Don't blame me. " It was not the dogs who fumbled their assignment, it was their handlers, said U.S. Rep. Bob Brady yesterday. The handlers were not properly trained, said Brady, who faulted the Transportation Security Administration for the personnel issue and for the agency's lack of communication with officials of Philadelphia International Airport.

Human error is likely the cause of a SEPTA train accident yesterday that sent nine people to the hospital and delayed commuters for much of the morning, SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said. A southbound work train struck the rear of a stopped R1 Airport train about 4:40 a.m. just southwest of 10th and Wagner Streets, near the Fern Rock station. Five crew members were on the work train, and 16 passengers and two crew members were on the commuter train. All the injured - four on the work train and five on the commuter train - were treated at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

I APPRECIATED Kenneth Braithwaite's Aug. 6 letter on my op-ed "8 Tips for Surviving a Hospital Stay. " Hospitals are making efforts to improve safety to save more lives, and patients are grateful. But that process will be slow- going given the magnitude of the preventable, fatal errors. Hospital care is hazardous to a patient's health. HealthGrades' most recent report (Fifth Annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, 2008) says that nearly a quarter of a million deaths in hospitals were found to be preventable.

Bank of Robin Hood PEORIA, Ill. - A former bank executive who was said to have a "Robin Hood" mentality has been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for taking money from some accounts and repaying others, as well as pocketing some of the money for himself. Thomas J. Mariotti, 37, was ordered to repay more than $691,000 to his former employer and to Tall Oaks Country Club, one of the affected accounts. Thompson says he can woo independents to the GOP BURLINGTON, Iowa - Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said "the political pendulum is swinging" against his party, and warned that there are a growing number of independents who are in danger of being swept up by the Democratic Party.

SEPTA investigators are looking at both human error and mechanical malfunction as a possible cause for the collision between two rush-hour Regional Rail trains in a tunnel under Center City, an agency spokesman said yesterday. A total of 32 people were injured in the incident about 5 p.m. Monday, eight of them SEPTA employees, said spokesman Gary Fairfax. None of the injuries was life-threatening. Between 900 and 1,100 people were on the two trains when the R6 to Norristown was rear-ended by an R5 to Doylestown outside the Market East Station, Fairfax said.

Bob Brady's campaign spokeswoman has been subpoenaed to testify at a hearing Tuesday to help explain the about-face in stating why the mayoral candidate failed to disclose his city pension income last week on his financial-disclosure form. That omission is the subject of a court challenge supported by two of Brady's rivals, who are trying to get him removed from the May 15 primary ballot. Businessman Tom Knox and State Rep. Dwight Evans say he should be disqualified as a candidate.