Then there are the numbers we were required to report. Like the incident rate. This represented the frequency with which our process resulted in human injury.

After working as a reliability engineer and a process engineer, it was only a matter of time before I realized that we had a repeatable process that resulted in injury at a fairly reliable rate. One month might be better (lower number) than the previous month, but over time the average was fairly consistent. There was variability, but also predictability.

But what if we stopped measuring in terms of our failures, and measured the number of actions that were aimed at improving safety? How about if we report on the number of inspections held, the number of unsafe conditions corrected, and the number or actions carried out based on recommendations from incident investigations?

Every day that employees go home as whole and healthy as they came to work is a victory. Every day we take measurable actions to make sure that happens again tomorrow is a bigger win.

So what do you do to assure that tomorrow is safer than today? Do you take action to make it so, or only corrective action when an accident occurs.

You can make a difference, and you have no reason not to do so.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

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.

• Lottery – Highly Improbable Favorable Outcome (HIFO), I have to consciously decide to buy the ticket.
• Safety – Highly Improbable Disastrous Outcome (HIDO), I consciously and unconsciously buy tickets.

The basic idea I am working from here is that to win the lottery, you need to buy a ticket, and in our daily lives injury can result through conscious and unconscious events that compromise our safety.

So, imagine that one day my wife calls me and says: “Did you bet our numbers yesterday like I asked? They were drawn!”  And  of course I did. I pull the ticket from my pocket and yes indeed I had the ticket, and there were “our numbers”.  5, 8, 9, 16, 22, 24.  I read them to her. Silence on the other end.  Then this – “Did you say 24?”  ”Right,” I say, “because our anniversary is August 24th.”  Silence again. Then she reminds me that our anniversary was the 23rd of August.  Uh-oh.

Notice I said that my wife called me. If this story were true, I would probably be saying “My ex-wife called me”. So this didn’t happen.

But if it did, do you think I could go to the lottery office with our birth and marriage certificates and explain what numbers I MEANT to bet?  I’m sure they would immediately understand and grant me the prize, right? No, they would grant me the prize for 5 out of 6 numbers, and leave it to me to explain why we didn’t get the jackpot.

If I could have that moment at the counter over again, would I think twice about the dates and get it right next time? Certainly, especially if I knew it would be the difference between jackpot and second place.

And when I get hurt because I didn’t take the right precautions, I would wish to live that moment over again too. I would want to take bad luck and turn it into good luck. Turn my HIDO into a BPSO (Best Possible Safe Outcome.

In Part 3 next week, I’ll tie this all together.

So why is that? Because human failure is interesting. Even when we are feeling down, we can find someone out there who had more opportunity and more advantage than we may have had, and they blew it totally.  We have FailBlog, not VictoriousBlog, and countless videos on YouTube demonstrating failed human effort.

Living in New York State in the 1990′s, we used to play the lottery quite often. Even matched 5 out of 6 numbers once for a little more than $2,000. This is in the days before multi-state lotteries with the PowerBall or MegaBall features that start at $12 million. I think the starting prize in New York was a mere $3 million.

So, my wife liked to play the same six numbers: her month and day of birth, my month and day of birth, and the month and day of our anniversary. Six numbers, easy to remember, and it was not unusual for her to ask me to stop and buy a ticket with “our numbers” on my way home.

This connects to safety, I promise.

Lottery odds are spectacularly bad, but the cost of a ticket is low. I can bet those numbers for $1. And if I won 5/6 like I did, I could make that bet for several years over, hoping to take that big win and make it bigger. I just have to buy a ticket.

Odds are long, and I played in hopes to win. But I bought the ticket, even though I am not likely to win. As they say, you have to be in it to win it.

In safety, we have nearly the same issue. I can perform unsafe acts that all have long odds in terms of resulting in injury, and I’m not likely to ever get hurt. I could hold the knife incorrectly and cut toward myself. I can use a chisel without safety goggles. And when I do that, I’m buying a ticket. I’m buying a greater chance to be hurt.

Lottery – Highly Improbable Favorable Outcome (HIFO), I have to consciously decide to buy the ticket.

Safety – Highly Improbable Disastrous Outcome (HIDO), I consciously and unconsciously buy tickets.

In Part 2 – What if I bet the wrong number?

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!

Before I moved to the Atlanta area, I connected in ATL dozens of times. You don’t even have to travel to or from the south to still find your way to the Atlanta airport as part of your trip. I met a passenger the other day who started her morning in Jackson, MS and was trying to get to Omaha. While it might seem logical that she was in Atlanta at that point, she got there by way of Memphis, and from Atlanta was headed to Milwaukee. Obviously, this is not the path from her original ticket, but once her first leg of the trip got disrupted it went downhill.

Yesterday I was heading to Milwaukee via commuter plane to catch a flight home. We were a little late pulling away from the gate when the attendant informed us that we still had to go through de-icing, and so some of our connections were in jeopardy. Almost everyone on this flight was connecting to somewhere else, and there was this collective groan that emerged with the announcement. It was a groan of discontent. I heard the person behind me ask his row mate, “Do you think that’s really necessary?”.

It was sort of painful to walk up to the gate in Milwaukee and see the jetway pulled away from my Atlanta-bound flight, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

When I buy a ticket, or when my company buys me a ticket, the money spent isn’t just for transportation from point A to point B. I am paying for the gate agents, the airport gate fees, the maintenance of the plane, the luggage handlers, and most importantly, the experienced experts who make the calls regarding the safety of a flight. In a weather situation like yesterday’s, I pay them to make the decision to de-ice, even though it will create scheduling ripples throughout their system. They don’t want to delay flights, but they don’t want disaster either. I sincerely believe that if the people on the plane yesterday could vote on the de-icing process, I would have been on the short end of the vote.

On the other hand, why the airline books tickets with a 25 minute connection, in Wisconsin, in February, is beyond me. The boarding process is underway before you even get there.

Do you have a peeve about safety practices that you believe don’t protect you? Would you want to put plane de-icing up to a vote?  Not me, thanks.

The words rang true for me today: Let’s be careful out there!

Do you consider the number 13 to be unlucky? Or maybe you have an actual fear of the number, which is called triskaidekaphobia. If you do, you wouldn’t be alone. Thirteen is frequently left out when numbering floors in a building or even aisles in an airplane.

Yet there are some who consider this a lucky number. Traditions for luck, both good and bad, go across cultural and religious boundaries, but very few have any scientific or fact basis.

The old saying goes “The harder I work, the luckier I get”. This is absolutely true with safety. Except instead of “hard work” we would probably say “smart work”. If I take on any action in an informed way, I can make better decisions about how to perform that action safely.

So don’t worry that today is Friday the 13th. Your safety and well being is in your hands, not in the determination of a calendar date. Make a decision to not let fate determine your safety. Make informed choices as you go about doing your work, and encourage others to do the same.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there!

Unfortunately, people sometimes play with safety in this way. Once they get hurt they change their pattern, but they gamble their way up to the point of injury by taking more chances with fewer protections. They get to know the rhythm of their machines, but they don’t know the failure pattern. They learn how to overcome a machine jam with the broomstick, they just aren’t able to predict the broomstick failing. Sometimes there is a new car behind door number three, but more often there is a washbucket and a sponge.

Do you choose from the doors hoping to get the right one, or do you collect as much information as you can, certain that you are making the safest choices you can? Because it is the right thing to do. Right for your family, right for your co-workers, and right for your future.

Let’s be careful out there.