Safeguarding lives: Avoiding the harm from the Giant Pendulum

We often come across various challenges in our lives that require our utmost attention and care.?One such challenge are the giant pendulums. This post is for giant pendulum safety week, where we draw attention to all of the giant pendulums around the country.

There are many giant pendulums, and not everyone is as familiar with the risks of the giant pendulums as those who work in the industry. They swing back and forth across our roads and footpaths. They have a lot of mass and inertia and do not slow easily. In some places they swing over the road at nearly 100km/hr, and in some places it is slower, although they always presents a risk of death and serious injury to those who are not vigilant when crossing their path. There doesn't seem like much we can do, so it is important to raise awareness about their risks. I will relay the advice that we give each year on giant pendulum safety:

Look and listen: We need people to look and listen, because failing to do so can result in tragedy.?The distance and speed of a pendulum is challenging to judge, even for experienced people, making it difficult to anticipate its arrival accurately. Giant pendulum are very quiet, and this can distort perceptions of their distance and speed. Impaired vision and hearing is common among older individuals, children, or those with sensory disabilities, and this can limit their ability to judge them. Even though we know that seeing and hearing a pendulum is problematic, we remind people to look and listen because their life depends on it.

Be patient: Parents and guardians play a crucial role in instilling in children the importance of waiting for a pendulum to pass completely before crossing its path. While we know that children are unpredictable, may struggle with patience, and can get distracted, we rely on children to be patient and aware because one small mistake can cost them their life.

Keep a safe distance: If people or vehicles find themselves in the path of a pendulum they will face devastating consequences. This is a known problem and there are many deaths each year in New Zealand. Remember, a pendulum can arrive from two directions and so pedestrians and drivers should look both ways. Also, drivers shouldn’t try to beat the giant pendulum or get unexpectedly stuck behind another car in the path of a pendulum, as this will lead to disaster.

Obey the warning signs: People need to heed the warning signs. We know that people forget or ignore warnings, and we also recognise that warning signs are an administrative safety control and therefor the least effective. However, failing to heed a sign can result in death or a life changing injury, so the signs should be obeyed if possible.

Communicate the risks: It is important for the public to be aware of the risk of death and serious injury from the giant pendulums. While we do recognise that public awareness campaigns are not very effective without enforcement to back them up, we also recognise that awareness campaigns do not alter the actual risk of the pendulum crossing.

Working around the giant pendulum:?If you need to work near a giant pendulum, you need to undertake regular health checks to make sure you can see, hear, judge distances, and move to get out of the way if need-be. The people most familiar with the risks of the giant pendulum decided that these are essential for safety, and if you do not pass these health checks, you’re not allowed to work near them. Unfortunately, it is impractical to implement such checks for the public, and we also recognise that the public may not really understand the risks, and have differing levels of ability, so we leave it up to each person to be responsible for their own safety when they are near a pendulum.

The giant pendulum was there first: The giant pendulums have been around for a long time, and to separate the public from all of the giant pendulums across the country would now be too costly. We cannot stop the giant pendulums because they are needed to keep the economy moving. The pendulums used to only swing once or twice a day when they started and when the property was zoned for housing, although now they swing many times and hour. However, if local communities decide that the risk from their giant pendulum is too great, that community will need to pay for a remedy. We also recognise that if we tried to introduce a giant pendulum crossing today the public would not tolerate such a hazard in their community.

Initiatives: There are programmes to separate the most problematic giant pendulums from the people. This is where we raise a giant pendulum up or build a tunnel under them for the cars and pedestrians to cross. We recognise that this is very expensive and for some reason the cost of eliminating the pendulum hazard is placed on the local community. There seems to be little political and public support, so funding is also difficult to get although somehow Melbourne has managed to achieve this.

So in summary, we need to be vigilant about crossing the paths of all giant pendulums. Let's keep spreading awareness, educating our communities, and advocating for giant pendulum safety awareness.?Together, with enough communication we can remind the public that they are the ones responsible for their own safety when crossing the path of a giant pendulum.

(Note: This post is for rail safety week and is about the risks of level crossings. If we can look at things differently we might have different perceptions of the risks, how we think about the hazards that are placed onto our society by others, what we tolerate, and what we might do about managing them. I'm an advocate for level crossing removal and believe the rail industry can and should do better. I also believe we need to place a much higher priority on level crossing safety by using 'higher order safety controls' and not relying on warnings and cautions for the general public to follow when we know that this doesn't actually work very well.