The biggest argument against requiring helmet use is that it is not preventive. Education about safe riding can save more lives than the wearing of helmets. Anyone who has ever worked in the safety field would agree that education and training are far more important than protective equipment, but they would also say that both are required.

Anyway, as the post title suggests, you don’t have to take safety precautions! If you live in a state that does require helmets, it is obvious when you are breaking the law. But what about all the other safety precautions that engineers have made for us – can we override them if we wish? You bet you can!

CAUTION – THESE ARE ALL THING NOT TO DO! You may recognize that people do them, but they are increasing the likelihood of accident or injury.

1. Clip ground plugs and adapters. This is less of a problem today than it was 20 years ago, but if you had a three prong plug and no outlets to match, the quickest solution was to clip the grounding part of the plug. You could use an adapter, but unless you grounded the adapter you were doing the same thing.
2. Buckle seat belts. Those annoying bells and buzzers can go away if you just buckle the belt behind you. At least on some cars. They keep making them smarter and smarter you know. Because we still insist on bypassing proven safety methods.
3. Buy bigger fuses. Most of us have breakers in an electrical box somewhere in the house, some still have the old fuses. If a circuit blows the fuse too often you could just put in a bigger  breaker, a bigger fuse, or better yet, a penny!
4. Bring on the extension cords and power strips. As our gadget inventory grows, so does our need for electrical power. What used to only be a problem at Christmas time can plague us all year. Most of us know that overloading an outlet can be a problem, but hey, the breaker will trip of the fuse will blow right? Unless we followed #3.
5. And while speaking of electricity, if the ground fault interrupter in your bathroom or kitchen needs to be replaced, you could replace it with a cheaper normal plug and not have the nuisance of the plug tripping out at times. Double win!
6. Power mower kill switch. Most power mowers today have a bar at the handle that needs to be squeezed for the engine to run. It’s called a dead man switch. If something happens to the operator, the machine won’t keep running. Unfortunately, the operator leaving the machine run while they moved something out of the way or reached to clear an obstacle was frequently the one injured. But don’t worry, you could just use tape or twine to tie it up. Problem solved.

OK, as I stated above – THESE ARE ALL BAD IDEAS! Do not do these things. If there is a safety measure or precaution you don’t like, do not override it. You may not be aware of every aspect that it was created for in the first place. It was not created to annoy you, but to protect you in some way. Sort of like how some people see their parents.

We all override some aspect of our personal safety. I stood on a chair recently (when no one was looking) because I had loaned out my ladder. Bad choice. How about you, when was the last time you consciously chose the less safe alternative?

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

Your personal safety is determined one decision at a time. Sometimes you are dependent on the decisions of others. Other drivers, your doctor, the guy who puts new brakes in your car. But how does your personal decision process work? Do you know? Take a moment to answer these three questions:

1. A ball and a bat cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

Each of these questions has an incorrect answer that many people quickly come to. In fact, in a study where these questions were posed to over 3,000 college students, the average correct score was1.24 out of 3.

Does this mean our intuition is wrong? It all depends on the models we have in our heads. The concept of doubling every day is a geometric progression, which is not in everyone’s day-to-day thinking. Neither is the concept of production planning. But, in the study, people who got all three answers correct were also more consistent in their risk-taking choices. Risk taking, the acceptance or denial of risk, is ultimately a decision process.

What does all this mean? Well primarily it points to the variability of being human. We are not 100% consistent in all we do, including the way in which we choose to protect ourselves. The reason Health and Safety regulations have become what they are is that people don’t always take precautions they could because they are inconvenient, too costly, too time consuming. When the government steps in and says “you must” then people fear the cost of the certain punishment over the cost of the low-probability potential loss.

Are you an independent thinker when it comes to safety, or do you rely on regulations and on the expectation that all products are designed with our safety in mind?

So you can check your scores, the answers to the three questions are here:

1. The bat is $1.05, and the ball is $0.05.
2. 5 minutes
3. 47 days

If you got all these correct, then you have some pretty clear thinking going on. I hope that extends to your choices regarding safety. Don’t forget, let’s be careful out there.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

]]> http://saferbychoice.com/2010/04/questions-your-first-answer-correct/feed/ 1 http://saferbychoice.com/2010/04/situations-eitheror-choice-each/ http://saferbychoice.com/2010/04/situations-eitheror-choice-each/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:12:32 +0000 Tim http://saferbychoice.com/?p=730

Do you know much about your own decision processes? Are you risk-averse? We think differently depending on how the choices are stated.

Consider this situation:

You have to choose between either

- an 80% chance of winning $4,000 with a 20% chance of winning nothing

or

- a 100% chance of receiving $3,000

Then look at this situation:

you can chose between

- an 80% chance of losing $4,000 with a 20% chance of breaking even

or

- a 100% chance of losing $3,000

In a formal study, 80% of the people chose the certain outcome in situation #1 ($3,000) even though the gamble had a higher payout.

In situation #2, 92% of the people chose the gamble, even though it’s mathematical expectation of a loss of $3,200 is larger than the certain loss of $3,000. When the choice involves loss of money, we are risk seekers and not risk averse.

These results are similar to people’s views of safety. The risk has to be evident and understandable in order for people to avoid the risk. If it is abstract or unknown, then people are less likely to use the provided protective gear or equipment. In my experience as a driver, for example, I can only recall two times in 40 years when wearing my seat belt mattered. So I could wear it less often and it probably won’t matter. The only problem is, I can’t predict when the next time I should be wearing it will be.

What did your choices to the situations above tell you about your risk aversion? Do you think that your answers were all about the benjamins? Would you have a different view if the content were about four fingers or three fingers?

Next post, we’ll look at two more situations with more serious implications. Will your answers or approach change? We’ll see…

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there!

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

Safety is also a word often used to imply security. And many times we feel secure because there is no information to tell us otherwise. That doesn’t mean that we can’t be more secure. Lately, I’ve been thinking about steps and actions that might improve my security, or my safety when it comes to finances. Some are the ones I have been using myself, and others are only more recently coming to mind.

1. Account security. Online banking is great. But how secure is your account? Do you change passwords regularly? Do you use easy to determine passwords? Do you use a common password for most of your accounts or logins? I have had some sort of palm or smartphone device for years, and when I lost one in an airport, I had to set about changing all my passwords, because there was an outside chance someone could crack my password file, and thus get all my passwords. I realized then how weak my plan was. Now I still keep a file on my phone, but it has a password that you couldn’t guess before the file auto-destructs. And all my financial accounts not only have tough passwords, but they have different user names.  Overall, I feel pretty secure.
2. Auto financing. Most people understand that they typical new car loses value when you drive it off the lot. Depending on how much you put down on a car, you may owe more on the car than its re-sale value for the first  two to three years of ownership.  I have a Ford Focus philosophy about cars. What is the least I can spend on a car that is sufficient for my commuting and traveling needs? Keep it maintained, and plan to drive it for 10 years (or longer), and you end of with a pretty good value. I can afford a much nicer car, at least in terms of current cash flow, but every extra dollar I spend now is one I am not saving for retirement.
3. Every extra dollar I spend now is one I am not saving for retirement. Yeah, I know I just said that, but when I consider the implications on my various monthly services – internet, cable, phone, wireless, lawn care, heat, electricity, water, trash removal – I am sure that I could pare those down a bit, and maybe work one or two months less than if I spend at the level I do today.  Spending less now equals more financial security – if I do the right thing with my saved money.
4. Consider the size of your house and mortgage. For me, these two have been increasing through 6 moves over many years. Thirty years of home ownership, and I currently have 24 years left on my mortgage. It doesn’t have to be that way. Its an old paradigm. My wife hit me with this one last week with one question: Why did we buy the house we live in today? I knew the answers, and every one of those answers no longer matter. We have fewer people in the house, we have no interest in the schools, and we have more rooms than we need. Yes, I can continue to live here and pay the mortgage and build equity, or we can find a smaller house that fits our current need, go to a mortgage that is half the size of the current one, and be paid off in 7 years. Not as much equity, but now I can save the money I was paying each month, and not one dollar of that goes to someone’s interest earnings on the money they loaned me.
5. Diversify. We all hear this, and it makes sense, but you need to pay attention to it carefully. Not all savings in one bank, not all investments in one stock. Life expectancy is increasing, spending power of dollars weakens over time, and social security just might not be accurately named – at least the “security” part.
6. Prepare for college, or raise your children to know exactly how they can get college paid for. Here in Georgia, my youngest is benefiting from the lottery in the form of a college scholarship. That means he can use what he and we saved for graduate school, which he will likely consider. There are all kinds of approaches today from 529 plans to pre-paid tuition. Understand the options, and don’t wait too long to decide what your approach as a parent will be.
7. Kick the gadget habit. “I don’t need an iPad, I don’t need an iPad…..”

There are many other important purchases and income opportunities that help define our financial safety. You are in control, every day. Do you have a particularly smart strategy for improving your financial security and safety?

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

It became such an important issue for me that later in my career, when I had a team of about 80 people, I didn’t let a meeting go by without some discussion about safety and the importance of challenging each other over potentially unsafe behavior. One day I began talking about the cost of an accident and one of my people told me he thought that maybe that’s what I was concerned about, saving money. I replied that regardless of what you think of my intent, I offer every employee the opportunity to stop doing work they consider unsafe until we can mutually resolve the issue. How can that be a bad thing?

So at the risk of being all about the money, I recognize that sometimes saving a few bucks is a good motivator for folks. Here are a few ways in which safety can save you money!

1. Practicing good methods around the house with knives, ladders, electricity and stairs can almost guarantee a much smaller chance of heading to the emergency room for a related accident. And under no current or emerging health plan would that be an economical chance to take.
2. Keeping things clean and clutter free not only enhances the value of your home, but reduces the chance of injury and again, those same ER visits.
3. Speaking of clutter, those partially used gallons of paint from all the projects you’ve done over the years could be a problem waiting to happen. Every year or so, someone in your area is having a free disposal day for items just like that. No cost to get rid of them, and no extra fuel for fire or explosion.
4. You know that wobbly old step ladder you got from your grandparents’ house when your father helped them move to a smaller place? It might be the most expensive free thing you have in your house. Throw it away and buy a new one. Yes, this is going to cost you, but think of it as cost avoidance.
5. Have a pest problem in your home? Hire a professional to take care of it. Again, this may sound like a cost, but when you start trying to handle this yourself you are starting by treating the symptom. You may not know where the nest or hive or burrow is. I watched a neighbor go after a hornet’s nest with a power washer one summer evening. It was hanging from a second story eave, just out of reach of the stream, so he imrpovised methods of positioning himself higher. He didn’t get stung at all, but he came so close to falling from the fence he was perched on and it would not have been a minor injury. He was lucky.
6. I know you’ve heard this before, but check tire wear and inflation on all your vehicles regularly. Change those tires before they fail. Don’t wait until the day after the big rain storm when you lost control of the vehicle, do it now.

Safety, like quality, is free. Every dollar spent, along with the right discipline, will save you much more in the long run.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there!

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

Luck is a funny thing. We use the terms good luck and bad luck to signify opposite concepts, but when we use the term “lucky” it is always with the connotation of having good luck. Like when Dirty Harry said to the punk, “you have to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ “.  But are we either lucky or unlucky?

Today I offer a list of things that have remote odds of happening, yet if they do it is usually attributed to good luck or bad luck.

1. Winning a big lottery, like Powerball or Mega Millions. You initiate your luck by buying the ticket first.
2. Having a cancer detected early while still treatable. You have to be proactive with your health.
3. Winning American Idol. You have to have the talent, you have to audition, and you have to outperform (for the most part anyway) all the other contestants.
4. Getting struck by lightning. Your home getting struck by lightning. I knew someone who had that happen. That’s just plain bad luck.
5. Having really bad weather on a day where it is very inconvenient to have bad weather. Your wedding, for example. You can have a plan B, but it still feels like bad luck. My parents were married in Cleveland in the first week of January. It was in the 60′s that day. Good luck I guess.
6. Having a tire go flat on your way to somewhere important like a job interview, a final exam, an appointment you have already had to re-schedule three times. Bad luck, unless of course you knew the tire was low and you had been having problems with it. Then it’s just bad planning.
7. Being in a 1960 Chevy with 8 other kids one night when a driver plows into you from behind at a stoplight. Actually, possibly another case of good luck. Everyone walked away uninjured, probably because we were so tightly packed in there.
8. Getting invited to Tiger Wood’s Apology Conference.

We use “luck” to explain the long-odds outcome, or the unexplainable. But you can’t count on luck. In most bad-luck scenarios, you can look at them afterward and identify the one or two things you could have done differently to avoid the unlucky outcome. Or the things you did that paved the way for luck.

Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

Last weekend, as part of my first 20,000 days celebration, I ran my second half marathon. In spite of my September post on preparation, I did not prepare to the degree I had planned. So here’s what you do to make sure you have a good time, a good race, and no injury.

1. Set your expectations to match your level of training. If you are running a longer race, but haven’t come close in your long runs, be prepared to walk part of the way. You can run the whole thing with the right level of mental toughness, but your risk of injury increases if you exceed your training by too much.
2. Follow a practical pre-race ritual. This is different for everyone, based in part on your travel to the race location. Some nutrition to start your engine is a good idea, but most runners don’t want to have too much in their stomachs at the start of the race. Get to the race with enough time to register and pick up your number (unless there was pick-up available the day before). Check for the porta-pottys. If you need to use one, chances are they will be busy just before the race, so line up early.
3. Position yourself in a reasonable location at the start. Don’t put other runners in the position of having to run around you in the early running. And don’t put yourself so deep in the pack that you don’t have room to run.
4. The longer the race, the more careful you pace. Don’t start out at your best stride when the race is much longer than your usual run. If you routinely run 5k in 25 minutes, then by all means go out fast and back off a bit if you need to. But if you are an 11-minute miler running a 10k, don’t rush out at a 9 minute pace and expect you will keep it up.
5. Remember the words of my friend John: “To finish is to win”. You trained, you registered, you got to the start. Now get to the finish and don’t worry about your time.
6. Enjoy the rest of your day. If you ran a long race you may want to ice the legs a bit, even in an ice bath. This will reduce the recovery time.
7. Pick another race and set up a new training plan!

I know that I was not happy with my last finish time, but thrilled with the run itself and that I finished without injury. But I know what I need to do to improve and I’ll run my own 13.1 in May with a new goal. Assuming I train enough.

Enjoy your training as much as your racing, and, as always, let’s be careful out there.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

Here are the tools I have seen mis-used the most in my life.

1. Screwdrivers – This simple tool is designed to translate force to rotate screws into and out of materials. there are several types, the most common being the phillips head and the slotted or regular. We use them as a pry bar, especially to open paint cans or put a bike tire on its rim. Not a good idea. At times we use them for the right thing, but we hold the object we are working on in a way that when the screwdriver slips, we could get a cut or even a puncture wound. Ouch!
2. Hammers – One person I know calls a hammer a “16 ounce wrench” because he uses a hammer to adjust things – to beat them into submission. Again, we use this tool mostly for what it was designed for, but many people don’t take the time to don even an inexpensive pair of safety glasses to provide protection from flying nails or materials that chip when they are hit.
3. Pliers, Channel-lock pliers, and any adjustable wrench. These tools are great, but their misuse can lead to aggravation. The biggest problem is using these tools for working with nuts and bolts. Anything other than socket wrenches, open-end wrenches or box wrenches used on a bolt head will compromise the geometry, making it harder to ever use the correct tool and creating sharp burrs. They also are prone to slipping, which leads to knuckle injuries.
4. Kitchen knives – When used to open that UPS package or as a pry bar to get those AA batteries loose from the remote, you are damaging the integrity of the blade, and making it less reliable when called upon to do the work you have it for. And that is when the knife slips off the green pepper and into your finger.
5. Scissors – Do you have one of those drawers in your house that is the repository for miscellaneous tools? I’ll bet the scissors in there are the most mis-used tool in the drawer. Mostly because they are used so frequently that they end up becoming the easiest thing to grab. Generally mis-used the same way a knife is. Here, the danger is in how we handle them when we start using them for alternative purposes.

Getting the right tool for the job is critical. Using it correctly is just as important. Do you have an experience where you didn’t think about the misuse of a tool until an accident happened? Let us all know about it, you might save us from injury.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

I’ve lived in places that routinely get weather like this, but Atlanta gets it so infrequently that people don’t get a chance to develop the skills to drive when conditions are icy. More importantly, we don’t work on the skill of deciding not to drive. I saw several interviews on the news with drivers who thought they could handle it, but they were wrong.

Many smart people of science have made great discoveries about how consistently the world works, and if we take the time to understand the rules they have discovered, we could save ourselves from life-threatening accidents. Because, you see, you can hardly call them accidents when nature is performing as predicted.

1. Gravity works, always. The exact rate of acceleration that the earth’s gravity is responsible for (9.8 meters per second squared) doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is relentless. The farther away you take yourself from a stable, level surface, the greater will be your speed at impact with the next surface between you and the earth. Climbing a ladder without setting it up correctly, or getting on a roof without the right kind of harness or other safety precaution, or just jumping on a trampoline without spotters are all activities that people insist upon as though gravity won’t be a nuisance to them.
2. Machines can multiply forces. Why is this important? Think about your car. If you are old enough to have driven a car that didn’t have power steering, you know that having two hands on the wheel was necessary at all times. Your car wants to travel in a straight line. When you turn the wheel, even a little bit, your front wheels dig into the pavement with tremendous force to move the car into another direction. But power brakes and steering make us feel like those forces are minimal. So when I heard a driver say he though he could handle the icy hill, he was totally neglecting the fact that without the tires biting into the pavement, no steering matters, the car wants to go in a straight line. The center of the car. It may start to fishtail a bit and move sideways, but the center is moving straight, and no amount of steering is going to change how the tires behave on ice.

So that’s it. Ice is not asphalt, and gravity never quits.

Any simple science lessons you have encountered that help you be safer?

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!

I play instruments. Keyboard and guitar primarily. Loss of even one part of one finger changes everything. But even day-to-day living is challenged by the loss of a small part of your hand, and loss by accident can be avoidable. There are things we can do to increase the likelihood that we will avoid injury to those precious digits.

1. Protect them in the cold. Keep you hands in your pockets, wear gloves, just take precautions in cold weather. Frostbite is nasty.
2. If your work is tough on your hands, wear protective gloves. The exact glove you need depends on the task at hand (oops, sorry for the pun!) but your hand can be protected while you manage many hand-intensive tasks.
3. Good grooming. Keep your nails trimmed and avoid picking at cuticles or biting your nails. Very bad habits as they can lead to infection.
4. Don’t reach in! A good friend tried to unclog his snow blower after the engine was shut off. Unfortunately there was some stored energy in the impeller system and he lost some fingers. Ouch.
5. Don’t multitask when using a knife. Cutting vegetables, trimming meat, or whatever you do with a knife requires concentration. If you can’t focus on the task, put the knife down.

Do you have a particular hobby that requires unique protection? Let us know what steps you take.

Anna at abdpbt is responsible for the effort to Fight Listless Mondays. Find other list links on her blog. Her lists and the others linked there always give you something to think about, and may even make you smile!