“For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.” — Alexander Pope I once led some process safety training that involved people from several different plants from around the world. After almost a week together, the people in the training became pretty comfortable with one another. One of the last topics of the training was [...]
“When you gamble with safety, you bet your life.” Slogan on an industrial entrance mat The biggest obstacle to getting people to heed safety training is that unsafe behavior does not result in certain death. The problem with a safety slogan like, “When you gamble with safety, you bet your life,” is that most people, [...]
“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” — C.S.Lewis We all learn from experience. When it comes to brutal lessons, though, it is better to learn from someone else’s experience. In the course of our work, clients have shared some experiences with us that everyone can learn from. [...]
“How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can’t even trust his own pants.” — Henry Fonda as Frank, in Once Upon a Time in the West There’s a cliché in the movies that involves a paranoid urban apartment-dweller with a dozen or more locks, deadbolts, chains, and [...]
“I did everything right. I don’t understand why it happened.”— Aleksandr Akimov, Chernobyl engineer You’ve probably heard of the new HBO miniseries, Chernobyl. The show is a fairly accurate retelling of the events preceding and immediately follow the nuclear disaster that occurred in Pripyat, Ukraine on April 26, 1986. Like any dramatized television production, it [...]
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” — Dale Carnegie Perfect lives don’t exist. We’ve all experienced loss, misfortune or pain. No one is a stranger to emotional stress. And emotional stress affects work performance, particularly safety. A study conducted by the U.K. Royal [...]
“I hated being pregnant, but I never minded being in labor. I knew I would get a prize at the end.” — Chris Schmidt, mother of four Things have been a little crazy in Saint Louis for the past week. Founded in 1967, the Blues Hockey Club has finally won a Stanley Cup. Everyone feels [...]
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. -Vincent Van Gogh There are some professions that top the list of dangerous jobs year after year: commercial fishing, loggers, roofers and trash collectors. The average fatality rate for all jobs [...]
“If the government wanted people to drive safely, they’d mandate a spike in the middle of each steering wheel.” — Gordon Tullock We call economics “the dismal science.” Economist Gordon Tullock certainly reinforced that idea when he applied the economic phenomena of risk compensation to driving safety and suggested that we would all drive more [...]
“Safety is a common denominator across all aspects of life...” Doug Bourne After working in a manufacturing environment for 2 years, I have developed a great appreciation for a good safety culture. Adhering to solid safety practices and policies, while irritating at times, kept us all going home at the end of the day in [...]
