Safety Vigilance!

A few weeks ago, a lady reported she was nearly struck in a crosswalk by a distracted driver making a turn. Fortunately, she was paying attention to her personal safety and was able to avoid injury. More and more it seems like Nobody’s minding the store… people are checked out (while walking, while driving, even while working) everyone seems to be distracted –their minds in a distant place… and this is a SERIOUS SAFETY ISSUE. 

Remember: YOU are the one person Most Responsible for YOUR SAFETY! Take Responsibility for your safety and keep your head in the game and watch out for co-workers, too!!!

Never assume that a driver or equipment operator will see you! Do not assume that your supervisor or coworker knows you’re there! Avoid making assumptions – they generally lead to trouble! Pay Attention to what is going on around you. Communicate with co-workers, supervisors and contractors. An experienced laborer was killed when a gasoline storage tank exploded as he was cutting the tank with a portable power saw. The worker's company installed, removed, and junked gasoline pumps and underground tanks. Although the worker had extensive experience in this line of work, this time he failed to adequately purge the tank and test for vapors. The explosion propelled the worker 10 to 15 feet from the tank into another tank. An electrician with 16 years of experience was removing metal fish tape from a hole at the base of a metal light pole when the fish tape became energized, electrocuting and killing him. 

(Fatal Facts/www.osha.gov) Many workers have to make decisions or take actions that keep the workplace safe. 

Various quality checklists are used to help the worker make good decisions, as well as increase observation skills in preventing accidents at work. Such tools and exercises as pulse-check or safety culture surveys, hazard identification, and barrier removal exercises are intended to help the worker address an event that could be a possible incident in the making. 

In the tragic story above, circumstances resulting in incidents (sometime catastrophic) happen when a pattern of behavior is very routine, having occurred for years without a problem. Creating safe habits that are maintained, even when no one is looking, requires high rates of reinforcement for observing accurately and acting correctly in all kinds of circumstances. Understanding hazards and their implications requires a plan of action. The vigilant worker may be overloaded with data trying to filter routine information. 

The challenges include what to do with unexpected or rare events when there is little prior history about what actions are best and, more confusing, contrary signals that are ambiguous or unclear about what to attend to. Understanding that experience as the definition of what makes for safe practice is insufficient. Everyone needs to understand that knowing what is right and doing what is right are two different things. Understanding leaders’ roles in preparation and practice is central to how safe the workplace remains. Attending goes beyond simply “seeing” something to analyzing its importance. The issue of seeing and yet not being attentive to danger is more than a failure to understand. Attending implies that appropriate action is taken.

So safe attending requires:

1) seeing or observing in some way (using one or more of the five senses),  

2) understanding the significance of what is seen, and

?3) acting or not acting on the situation'  

Practical analysis of how a person decides to make one choice over another also applies to when and if individuals identify safe or unsafe conditions in the environment correctly. In a nutshell, accuracy of judgment in identifying error and reinforcement for the actions taken are keys to keeping the environment safe. Lone workers in high-vigilance situations must be able to sort through the noise in the environment and separate out real signals of threat. They decide what is good for themselves, for fellow workers and how their immediate actions harm or help individuals in the work setting. What effect will failure produce? What are the risks to self and others? 

Most line workers understand that their decisions are critical to safety, and often are very skillful in doing the right thing. If they are attuned, they often are excellent in taking immediate action. However, these same workers engage in routine activity where they may not maintain constant safety vigilance. Two employees were attempting to adjust the brakes on a backhoe when one of the workers told the backhoe operator to raise the wheels off the ground using the front bucket and the outriggers, and then to put the backhoe in gear at idle and step on the brakes. The worker crawled under the machine to adjust the brakes. Within minutes, he was found dead under the backhoe with the hood of his rain jacket wrapped around the drive shaft. His neck had been broken when the jacket wrapped around the backhoe drive shaft. 

(Fatal Facts/www.osha.gov) Infrequent contact with risky events can lead to significant misses. 

An event may appear so much like an earlier and similar event that workers may interpret current signals as of not much significance, just like something that occurred in the past and was, after all, safe. 

The decision then was to act. Why not now? In other words, “We’ve always done it this way and nothing bad has happened.”