Accidents are never funny. And the picture of the broken chair can give you an idea of how serious this could have been.

I immediately tweeted her back asking why she didn’t routinely check her chair. “I need to do that?” she wondered.

I’ve worked around equipment my whole career, and it is easy to see how a lawn mower or a bulldozer can be dangerous, but you rarely think of office furniture as hazardous. Have you ever:

1. Sat in a chair with a missing wheel?
2. Rocked back in a four legged chair and balanced on the back two legs?
3. Left a file or desk drawer open?

These are the obvious examples. Teresa found out that the failure was the screws stripped out of their plastic anchor points.

Anything with moving parts wears. Mostly, wear is a slow and nearly invisible process, almost like aging. But it happens. Anything that you use that has moving parts is worth inspecting once in a while.

So before you sit in that office chair next time, take a few seconds to make sure it’s safe. I’m pretty sure Teresa will.

One of the more memorable answers came from a former Major League Baseball pitcher. It was raining, and his footing was not good. The umpires seemed determined to let the game go on. He played through without incident, but he didn’t pitch his best because he was compensating for the poor condition of the mound.

Over the last few weeks, the management of the NFL has had two opportunities to act in regard to safety of its employees and of the general public. First, when the collapse of the Metrodome led to scheduling a game on the fozen field of the University of Minnesota, and then two weeks later when blizzard conditions in Philadelphia made travel in the city dangerous.

Stadiums in the NFL come in two versions: covered and not-covered. Those that are not covered have an underground system to keep the turf from freezing, allowing the players some level of certainty that their cleats will work effectively. Frozen turf leads to poor footing. Poor fitting leads to injury. In addition, frozen turf is like concrete, and every tackle will have a much greater impact on the players. Yes, it’s a tough game and they wear personal protective equipment, but that equipment was still designed with turf in mind. The decision: Play the game.

In the case of the snow event, the game was postponed. The reason given was that it was not safe for the fans to travel through the storm to get to the game, and endangering the public would be in no one’s best interest.

The problem with the frozen turf scenario is that there were not a lot of options that would allow the fans of the Minnesota Vikings to attend the game they had paid for.  The University offered the nearest venue with enough seating to serve the fans and to allow the game to be played in a reasonable time. So management had to make a decision with minimal options. In the case of the weather problem in Philadelphia, it was evident that in a couple of days the conditions that caused the problem will not longer impact the opportunity to have the game. In short, it was an easier decision to make.

I’m not judging. I’m sure that the NFL has a robust protocol for decisions like this, including trainers and equipment experts who know the limitations of the equipment.

But what about where you work? Is your management faced with similar tough decisions? Does it look like there is a reasonable consistency to the decisions that impact the safety of the employees?

In Part 1 and Part 2, I was explaining the relationship of chance-taking and outcome. Specifically, we wait in line to buy tickets for highly improbable though favorable outcomes (lottery), and we take chances on unfavorable outcomes because we think they are highly improbable (many other aspects of our lives). We do the former out of hope, and we do the latter often in the interest of expediency.

Now, if you want to save your money and bet realistically on the most probable outcome, put your money away and don’t buy the lottery ticket. Put it in savings, use it to pay down debt, buy what you need. Just don’t buy the ticket.  All it requires is a little personal discipline.

In personal safety, at work and on your own time, you also have to apply discipline to NOT buy tickets. You have to:

• Identify the driving conditions and adjust accordingly.
• Research and buy additional protective equipment before you mow the lawn or paint the house.
• Read the labels and follow directions. If something requires extra ventilation, there’s a reason.
• Approaching a traffic light as it turns yellow, if your internal voice says “I think I can make this” your new replacement voice should be saying “Time to brake”.

Taking shortcuts is like buying tickets to an injury. We fool ourselves by saying “If I am just more careful in using this chair instead of a ladder, I’ll save time and money and won’t get hurt.” Doing this repeatedly, you collect enough tickets, and you might eventually have the unfavorable outcome.

Actually, I don’t care if you buy lottery tickets or not. But I worry about carelessness when you don’t even realize you are being careless. Don’t buy a ticket to an accident, make the safe choice, every day.

Let’s be careful out there.

Turning would be different. You could easily underestimate the position of the car now that you would be sitting closer to the right wheel than the left.  Assuming the position of the brake and gas pedals is switched, you would have to get accustomed to that. And if it was a manual transmission, you would be even more challenged. If you are good at checking over your shoulders, that process would not be as simple as you might think. Blind spots are reversed, and your brain just doesn’t catch up right away.

The biggest adjustment would be if you wanted to pass on a two lane road. There would be no way to asses the dangers of moving into the oncoming lane in the first place.

This is why driving in adverse conditions, like heavy rain, or snow and ice, can be problematic. Not because cars can’t handle them, but because our normal driving leaves us in a state of simplified attentiveness. We have it mastered in most cases, and we think about many things while we are driving. When conditions get bad, we sit up, turn the radio down, and concentrate just a little harder.

Are you concentrating enough on your driving? How much do you rely on the other people sharing the road with you.

If we all turn our attention up just a notch or two, it’s possible we could reduce the total number of accidents on our busy highways.

And yes, I was at a complete stop before I even reached for the phone to take this picture, and no cars were moving at the time. Cars standing still also reduces accidents, but we just can’t get anywhere then!

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

The reason is simple enough – the easier a sign is to read, the less a driver’s attention is taken from the road to read the sign. One of the interesting aspects of this idea is that it applies only to positive contrast signs – light letters on a dark background. In the examples shown here of negative contrast, the Clearview type is possibly less effective than the current standard. It has been recommended that signs with negative contrast remain under the old standard.

The Clearview decision was made in 2004, with an expectation that signs would change over to that font in the following 15 years.

I researched what I could on this topic, and there is a lot of science behind it all, including the studies on the negative contrast. In some areas of government, they might have concluded that until they can find a type style that is more effective in all situations, then they shouldn’t make the change. But in this case, the benefits of changing a majority of the signage outweigh the possibility of a one-type-works-for-all solution.

Will we ever know if this saves lives? Not likely. And since money is spent on new signage routinely (signs get damaged, stolen, or weathered) it does not have a significant financial impact. I’m glad there is some science behind the choice, that our highway engineers are looking for ways to make our roadways just a little bit safer. If you have any exposure to continuous improvement, you realize this is worth looking at.

Do you think signs matter to you? I’m not sure I read them much where I live, and when I am in unfamiliar areas, my GPS pretty much tells me what I need to know. What do you think – will emerging technologies make this a non-solution? Will sign readability not be a critical issue in the future?

When my son was first driving, he told me he thought he was a good driver. I told him he was, but that the real test is how he would handle the vehicle and himself when the unexpected happens. A tire failure. An animal runs in front of the car. Driving in a snowstorm. Now he’s 27, and he’s a better driver than he was before, because he’s gained experience and learned from that. He’s had many “moments of choice” when he had to call on his knowledge or experience to turn into the skid, or ease slowly to the side of the road, or take whatever maneuver the situation may have called for.

If you are in a job that has anything to do with people, especially leading or training them in any way, safety is part of your profession, whether you acknowledge it or not. You are in a position to help prevent accidents and injuries. For you, the moment of choice is happening constantly. You are looking at the equipment, the machinery, the workers, the office, the conditions all around you and trying to make them all flow together in a way that is good for your business. And the safest possible way is good for business.

Have you had a moment of choice today? I’ll bet you have. It may have been a choice regarding taking that cell phone call in the car, or even considering reading or answering a text message while driving. Maybe it was walking through a factory, you saw someone doing something that could be done with far less risk, and you took the time to point out the alternative, or you chose not to.

Did you have a moment of choice this week that you can point to as one that made a big difference, either for your own safety or those you work with? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

In the skit, the SNL anchor is interviewing another pilot who acknowledges Sully’s heroic effort, but is a little bitter. Why? Because he learned how to avoid the birds.

I’m not a pilot, but I would think that if Sully could have avoided the birds, he would have. This was not a 4-wheel drive truck going 35 miles an hour when a child’s ball rolled into the street. This was a massive airplane. There is no traction in air for quick maneuvers or an easy way to swerve away from the danger – I don’t think. But the idea was still interesting to think about.

In industrial safety, as I have written before, an accident is frequently discussed afterward with the use of the word “luck”. Sometimes good luck is at play, and sometimes bad luck. It was bad luck that the flock and that airlane were on intersecting flight patterns. It was good luck that Sully happened to be a student of exactly that type of landing. Another pilot may have been able to do the same thing, or maybe not.

The pilot on SNL seemed to think that the skill of avoiding the birds is what should be acknowledged.

Do you have someone with a knack for not getting hurt? They seem to avoid the dangers? Or maybe they just know more about spotting the problems and steering clear. It might be that you have something to learn from them.

Oh, and for the record, I think Sully is a real hero. Not for making the landing, but for being ready to do just that. For caring enough about his work to know what to do when the unexpected happens.

Let’s be careful out there.

Many were given for actually working safely – for getting caught doing the right thing. Others were a reward for not having injury. Or at least not having an injury reported, but I’m not going to go there today.

Anyone who has spent any time in the field knows that the saying “Working safely is it’s own reward” is true, but it doesn’t generate the kind of behaviors we really want. What we seek is vigilance and action. We want people to see the potential or injury or incident, and take action to eliminate the potential, reduce the likelihood, or reduce the consequence.

I’ve never once worked more safely because if we finished the year with the right record we would all get jackets. But I have used that type of reinforcement to help get the message across. To help people consider that their change in behavior is being rewarded. The change had a consequence of keeping everyone whole and the added consequence of a “prize” for the team.

Even though many safety and HR professionals feel that the best incentive is the promise of personal well-being, many risks are just not visible until experience and training help people to see them. So if rewarding people for avoiding injury helps them develop more discipline about working safely, then great. Fear is a great motivator, but if you’re ignorant of risks, or even a bit fearless, it won’t help you.

So how do you characterize your personal motivation toward safety? How do you motivate others?

However you choose to motivate, be careful out there!

It might not seem to be a brave thing at first glance, but I have seen bravery in plant managers who are willing to fire someone for a safety violation. It’s brave because it is not a popular decision. It’s brave because the employee involved was trying to keep production up when he reached into the machine. It’s brave because other employees who reported the action now feel at fault, and may never speak up again.

But where I’ve seen it done, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Whenever I am involved in orienting employees, even when safety is not my direct accountability, I make it a point to let them know how I feel about my accountability for their safety. In short, if they don’t regard their own safety adequately, then we can’t afford someone to watch over them. One hundred out of one hundred times, I will go to an unemployment hearing over a perceived wrongful termination than to the funeral of an employee who I could have stopped from killing himself.

How courageous are your supervisors? Do they have the permission to be bold?

Thanks for reading, and let’s be careful out there.

In my second or third year as a team leader, I was making a safety presentation to my team. I was reading a lot about Deming at the time, and the whole notion that quality, managed correctly, reduces cost. The same applies to safety.

When employees are fully trained and expected to work safely, the investment involved in getting them there pays off. They stay safe and remain able to work and contribute. They never become a non-contributing expense. One of my machine operators said “You’ve always been a proponent of safety Tim, but the way you just explained it, your interest is in lower costs, not my safety. If I didn’t know you, that’s what I would have understood you to say just now.”

This was a smart guy, a team member who had worked with or for me for at least 3 years at that point. He was trying to explain to the newer employees in the room that I cared more about their personal safety than they might think I did from listening to me. I assumed they already knew that.

I asked if that mattered, if working in the safest possible manner was it’s own reward, and something we do for ourselves and our family. The truth is that my employer at the time had a tighter standard for safety than many of us had. Things we might do at home to save time or money – like use a chair instead of a steady ladder – were simply not tolerated in the workplace.

But would people work more safely because they thought I was genuinely concerned for their safety, or because the consequence of discipline for not following rules was something they could not afford?

It occurred to me that I did not care about motive. I just wanted them to work as safely as possible. If they didn’t have a personal motive, then part of my work was to help them get one.

What’s your motive for encouraging safe practices at work AND at home? What is the motive perceived by your employees? Does it matter?

Let’s be careful out there.