Momentary Lapse in Safety

Written By: Brent Knight, CSP; President, ISS, Inc.

For many years I have subscribed to fatality narratives and accident alerts. I keep a file that I can revisit with more accident narratives than I can count. As I return and revisit this file, it saddens me to no end.

Since I entered the safety profession in 1992, it has been my goal to make a difference; to do everything within my means to prevent injury and death. And yet, it continues. Year after year, workers continue to die on the job.

As I read the narratives and listen in safety meetings as fellow safety professionals share accident details, I am amazed at how preventable some of these accidents are. Now, as I say this, I do believe that all accidents are preventable, but some are really preventable.

The accidents that get me the most occur when a worker loses focus for a moment of time and in that moment, makes a mistake that costs him or her their life. I have read countless reports of fatalities where the victim had it all and yet made a mistake. I attribute these types of accidents to two things. First, a loss of focus that results in a mistake. The second, and arguably one of the hardest things to address in our field, is a desensitization to hazards.

Let’s touch on this last one since I think that it is a significant obstacle for us to overcome. Over time, workers dull or become numb to hazards when nothing bad happens. Don’t believe me? Just watch a new worker on a construction site on their first day. Their eyes are huge, and they are very focused on everything going on around them. Fast forward a year and you will likely see a worker who is hyper-focused on the task at hand and not paying attention to anything going on around them.

This is where the repetitious nature of our jobs in the safety profession kicks in. We must continually discuss hazards and make sure that our workforce stays sharp. If we do not, we will undoubtedly see accidents.

All the training and reinforcement in the world cannot overcome these momentary lapses in reason and focus or the desensitization to hazards. To me, this is a team effort and takes every person on a project to manage. As they say, be thy brother’s keeper. I believe it and feel that it is the best approach to injury and accident prevention.