posted on 11.19.14

By popular demand, here is another edition of what are, in the vast majority of cases, lazy rationalizations of safety mishaps. Please do not fall into the trap of automatically calling on such dribble to justify gaps in a safety and health program.

She was only doing it for 5 minutes.

A contractor, who did some work on my home, greeted me one morning while he was wearing dark glasses. Knowing I am a safety consultant, he was embarrassed. He said he “always” wears his safety glasses when he uses the power saw. I awaited the “but,” and it arrived as scheduled. He said he wore safety glasses while using the machine, “but” removed them to take a measurement, and did not don them again when he made one more cut. As a result, he had to wear dark glasses for several days and went through a prescription of eye drops.

In another case, an employee stood behind a person who was operating an abrasive wheel. The person behind caught a chip in the eye and ended up blind. The victim was only in the danger area for a very short period. Employees have often been severely injured when completing one last task before clocking out, or when they had only one quick work task to perform. It could be one more bend on a press brake (without checking the adjustment of the guard), one trip up a hastily set up stepladder (without assuring the spreader and supports were fully locked), one quick “ride” up on the bare forks of a forklift (without attaching the safety cage), one fast repair on a 220 VAC circuit (without locking out power), or one flammable liquid transfer from a 55-gal drum to a smaller container (without installing grounding and bonding). As for impeding access to exits or extinguishers “for just 5 minutes,” the phrase that says it all is, “Fire can’t tell time.” Good safety and health practice does not have a break time.

I told him a thousand times.

Perhaps you did tell him many times, but what specific, assertive, definitive steps did you take to modify or terminate the behavior? Telling an employee something is not, in itself, tantamount to causing that employee to act in a different (safer) way or to cease acting in the unsafe way. If a fatality or an extremely severe injury was sustained, you might lie in bed that night telling yourself over and over, that you had instructed or warned the victim many times about the unsafe behavior. You might try to convince yourself that it just wasn’t your fault, that you need not feel guilty, and that you couldn’t have done more to preclude the accident. You might try, until the wee hours, to absolve yourself of culpability. Somewhere in the darkness or first light, you will probably search deeper and more introspectively and confront the truth; you had not taken positive actions to alter the dangerous behavior. You had the responsibility and the authority. You could have done something meaningful and decisive, but failed to.

You take a chance even when you cross the street.

I’ve heard this s-o-o-o many times. Depending on the accident or potential accident in question, the implication is often that, if employees exercise good judgment and informed caution, then no one should be injured. The translation may be “There’s no need for a guard on the machine, as long as employees are careful.” To take this poor logic further, why guard any machines, install railings on staircases, and wear impervious gloves when pouring acid? The supposed point of the excuse is that, if employees do everything perfectly, they will not get their hand in the danger area of the machine, will walk on steps in a manner whereby they will not need to grab a railing, and will be so steady and accurate in pouring acid that none will touch the hand.

Is it possible to be struck by a vehicle when crossing the street? Sure. Parallels between the occupational setting and a person crossing a street are so weak that no lengthy direct discussion is needed. One chief difference is that neither the pedestrian (nor his/her family or employer) has any authority or influence on the driver. In a plant, on the other hand, there is the opportunity to set and maintain controls through authority.

Potential pedestrian victims (or those who want to protect them) are not the ones erecting traffic lights, setting speed limits, or controlling speed or direction of the vehicle. Yet, there are still specific precautions they can take. The person crossing should look both ways and gauge the speed of the traffic, the drivers’ visibility, the weather, the condition of the road, and so on. However, there’s more. Where pertinent, only cross when the traffic light favors the pedestrian, and then only within the crosswalk. Further, the controlling authorities (police, DOT, etc.) should have carefully set the appropriate speed limit and installed signs and/or traffic lights with due respect to the area.

Article provided by Rick Kaletsky, MTI’s Official Safety Consultant. For more information, please contact the MTI Office at info@heattreat.net.