"Safety attitudes refer to individual and collective beliefs about hazards and the importance of safety, together with the motivation to act on those beliefs....A minimal requirement here would be for senior management to hold a realistic view of the world and of the short- and long-term hazards entailed by the organization's activities..." [Pidgeon N.(1991) Safety Culture & Risk Management, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 22,1, 129-140]
Citing B.A. Turner [Turner B.A.(1978) Man-made disasters. London:Wykeham] Pidgeon also stated that "These difficulties are often compounded with technical malfunctions and operating errors, with the result that an unnoticed situation is generated, counter to [both] the accepted beliefs about hazards and to established safety norms and procedures..."
In other words, the responsibility for safety management lies with senior management, who must make themselves aware of the real risks involved in their operations and not allow an unnoticed danger to creep in, despite apparently effective existing monitoring procedures. We should never forget that the Chernobyl disaster was predicated by a test of the plant's safety systems!
Currently our industry has a strong dedication to safety and safe working practices. Nevertheless mistakes are made and accidents result, often when staff are working in unusual circumstances or while tired by long hours or lack of rest. The fact that we get away with it most of the time leads to the practices becoming SOP and then the "unnoticed danger" has crept in. Management must not allow such situations to develop or more importantly not predicate them by exerting pressure on engineering departments to perform with less than optimal staffing levels. After all, most people do not willingly work until they drop - even for the best overtime rates: they do so because it is the expected group norm. Expecting lower level supervision to be responsible for HF management is at best myopic and at worst criminal negligence.
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Through difficulties to the cinema