I do a fair amount of gliding and it is customary to have an independent check of the controls when strapped in before you set off. Some years ago at my club we changed the challenges, e.g. ‘Left rudder?’ became ‘Rudder?’ to ensure that the checker had to look at said control surface and respond with its actual position rather than what you just said. This kind of thing applies very much in commercial aviation too and checklists if performed regularly can end up as mouth music, especially if they are done at busy times alongside other tasks and the responses are 99.9% of the time the same as the the last occasion. I dislike the response ‘checked’ as it has little information content to trap errors and leaves the challenger wondering if/when/what was checked or not.
Some people in management think that to improve safety means adding more and more procedures and checklists to cover their backsides in the event of an incident but often this has the reverse effect and they end up as a distraction to the basic operation. What do you need to get into the air? An aeroplane, a runway, some thrust and some high-lift devices if your steed requires them. Anything else is icing on the cake but things seem to inevitably get increasingly more complicated over time which is not necessarily beneficial overall. How many notable ground collisions have we had this year already? Far too many...