A Little Challenge For Experienced Safety Professionals Only

Calling on all experienced Safety Professionals with a sharp mind and a discerning eye…..We all know how important it is to wear as much PPE as possible when working on a construction site – it wont really stop many serious injuries but it does allow the maintenance of control, mean we can pad out inductions, gives a reason to yell at people and creates the illusion of a safe workplace.

Could you please tell me one critical thing that is missing from this sign spotted recently at the entrance to a construction site and what is that telling you about the culture and the approach to safety on this site?:

“Wear 4” – sounds like the beginning of a line from a Shakespeare play……. that line is a clue to the answer to the question above and no it isn’t gloves, hearing protection or a dagger!!!

UPDATE: Well, after a few thousand views nobody has yet solved the puzzle – sometimes the answers can be lost in all the noise, distraction, priming and framing.

In 1999, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris conducted a study on the phenomenon of ‘inattentional blindness,’ then publishing their “invisible Gorilla” video, a video which supports their finding that it is incredibly easy for people to miss details in visual information simply because they are not looking for them and are so focussed on the obvious. Their research was presented as a test for the public in a video released in 2010. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo

The critical point they made is that the mind is naturally drawn to whatever it is that our attention is directed towards. We are often easily fooled in this way and Safety is a master of illusion. When the noise is loud enough we inherently ignore important details, when we are prompted to take something simply at face value. The good thing is that our unconscious is probably very aware of what the semiotics are doing to us and I have no doubt that this sign would cause those glancing at it to have some uneasy feelings, even if they cant rationally explain them.

Comments

Safety Works in Mysterious Ways….

Signs On a Church Refurbishment Site Spotted these signs on the fence of a Church refurbishment project today. When I saw the irony (is that what you would call it?), I laughed until I stopped……

Systems as Imagined v Systems in Practice

Systems as Imagined v Systems in Practice The recent NSW Supreme Court decision, Attorney General of New South Wales v Tho Services Limited (in liquidation) (ACN 000 263 678) [2016] NSWCCA 221 is another in a long line of decisions that highlight the disconnect between safety management systems as they are documented, and what occurs in practice. Documented safety processes are important. They provide guidance on how safety is managed and evidence that an organisation is meeting its obligations. However, where an accident reveals long-term, systemic non-compliance with obvious safety expectations documented safety processes do not provide a defence, often they do not provide mitigation, and in cases such as this they are an aggravating circumstance. As the Court noted: The vast range of induction and supervising protocols adopted by the respondent or in force at its premises serves not to relieve the respondent of its responsibility for safety but on...

A Critique of Pure Reason

I was doing some research on incident investigation tools today and recalled this VERY popular post from last year. The SCM nicely allows us to take our pick of endless causes and to assign blame to not only the worker but management, the system and objects as well – no wonder it and ICAMembert are so popular: A Critique of Pure Reason – (With Apologies to Immanuel Kant) There is not a week goes by without someone suggesting I should read James Reason or that I haven’t read James Reason. I am also advised that I don’t read James Reason properly because somehow all worldviews must be in agreement, particularly in safety. In the short history of safety, the works of Reason particularly, the Swiss Cheese metaphor (causation theory) and Human Error theory have become attributed as fact. Should one disagree with Reason’s theories one obviously can’t read or hasn’t read Reason’s work properly. It is interesting to note the way that Reason is used to invoke reductionist ...

Digital Engineering Library

Search This Blog