1 Believe everyone else, in the air and on the ground, is an idiot and you may live longer.
2 Check, check and check again.
As far as the Lauda 767 crash is concerned, Nikki Lauda himself refused to believe that the pilots were unable to recover from the reverse thrust deployment. He made repeated attempts in a simulator to do better, but failed. Which leads me to my final comment:
3 Boards of inquiry attempt to do in several hours/days/weeks what unfortunate pilots struggle to do in several seconds. It's hard to win!