JR driver thinks -- big mistake!

It amused me that Asahi reported a train driver in Nara who overshot the station "because he was thinking and was late applying the breaks". (In Japanese). He overshot the station by 250 metres, and correcting the error delayed the following two trains, inconveniencing about 100 passengers. (Those more familiar with Japan might be saying, "What? Only 100? Phish!", but the two reasons for this were that it was in deepest Nara and happened at 18 minutes past midnight on a work day -- so there were less than the usual number of workers commuting at the time.)
Now clearly, the Japanese should be indirectly translated as "wasn't concentrating", but it's very amusing that he made the mistake because he was "thinking" (direct translation). Anyone who's stood in the forward carriage of a JR West train and watched the automaton actions of their train drivers will understand this all too well. They are not, categorically not, supposed to think. Next time I'm in Japan I'll count the hand movements, but at each station, light and otherwise, drivers are supposed to point at their timetables, point at their dials, point at their equipment, and so on. Total concentration is required. The individual timetables are clipped to an eye-level clipboard next to the driver listing the arrival and departure times to the minute for each station along the route. Drivers are required to stick to these times at all costs -- clearly far too high a cost.
Perhaps if JR, and a number of other companies I could think of (anyone say, "Daiei"?) might do a lot better if employees where actually given some leeway to do dangerously risky things such as thinking.