Use of the vest in apron areas

[Piltdown Man]

H49 - You don't surprise me with your response and you can certainly think of me as being the enemy. Safety is the absence of events that hurt people and damage equipment. None of us should be hurt at work and no person should be hurt by day to day activities. Yet they still are. So despite having literally thousands of safety rules and initiatives, we still can't stop accidents. Why is that? It's basically because the safety experts, the people who like rules and procedures are now too remote from the activities they are trying to regulate. A beautiful example of this is shown above. The passengers appear to be safe enough without HiViz yet the loaders are not.

To be safer in the future we will have to mentally take a few steps back. We have to ask ourselves like how come so many people survived working in dangerous environments managed to survive? Was it luck or was it in the way they went about doing things? We also have to ask difficult questions like, does this "safety rule" actually work? Has this "safety notice" actually been read? What would happen if we unregulated access to area x? And so on.

Let me repeat my message in fewer words - There are too many "safety" procedures that fail to improve safety.

Genghis has it - on a good day with an empty apron, what does a HiViz jacket do to improve your safety? But his comment "...at night in the rain, on a busy apron, nobody but an idiot would leave their hi-viz in the office" shows part of our solution, people thinking. So Helen49, you stick to your rules and procedures. Abd you can count on me sticking to them as well, no matter how absurd. But if ever I get hurt on an apron controlled by someone like you, expect to see me in court with my greedy, filthy compo lawyer. If I appear to be uncivilised in this it is because I believe in having a safer world.

As a passing thought to end, is 100% safety realistically achieveable? Personally I think ALARP is the way to move forwards. But we do that in an open and transparent manner. Get everybody into the process, especially those at the sharp end.