Today my friend Teresa posted the following on Twitter: 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…
Tag Archive: unexpected
What’s Your Compromise?
Tools. They make work easier. The right tool, applied in the right way, with the right level of skill, can make even the most difficult jobs simpler. Each tool brings us an advantage. In physical terms, it is usually a mechanical advantage. But never a thinking advantage. Tools sometimes make us think less. We don’t…
More On Obligations
Recently I wrote about my experience with safety obligations. These were three statements that all employees where I work are expected to follow. In writing, and in discussion, they seem clear and easy, but we all have to learn to implement them successfully. When I worked in a facility that put these in place, I…
Can We Control Random Events?
In the past I have written about luck and it’s role in safety. We think we can control everything, but there is very little we truly control. I’ve worked around big machines my whole life. Machines don’t kill people, but people die from making mistakes while working with them. Machines are totally unforgiving of human error, which…
Luck and Lottery – Part 1
The most frequently heard lottery stories seem to be related to the misfortune of winning. There are news stories and television programs devoted to the exploration of how winning the lottery results in breakdown of the individual or family involved. We don’t however learn about the countless many who win and do not go on…
5 Ordinary Tools Often Used in an Unsafe Manner
The invention of tools is one of the things that differentiates us from other life forms. Not all necessarily, like the sea otter who figured out how to break open shells, but most. Our willingness to use tools, however, is generally not tempered with the desire to use them correctly, or to use the right…
6 Moments When I Wished For a Do-Over
Safety is one of those things that has a fair amount of chance involved. Once a chain of events begins, it can be a matter of several factors that determines the severity of the outcome. For example, I once helped a good friend build a greenhouse in his back yard. He was on a 6′…
The Moment of Choice
In this blog I try and present ideas that would give people an opportunity to discuss options, to make choices. Everything we do is decisionable, and we are frequently on autopilot. But if we learn to make the best decisions with each action we take, when the moment of decision is quick we will have…
5 Reasons We Aren’t Always As Safe As We Could Be
As an advocate for personal safety, the tools I use most often are awareness of possibilities and appreciation of risk. If you make yourself aware of what could go wrong in a situation, and weigh that against the risks involved, you can make the best choices for your safety. Here are a few items, some…
Avoiding the Birds
On a Weekend Update Thursday edition last week, the Saturday Night Live team came up with a pretty funny story about Captain Sully Sullenberger returning to the cockpit. Sully is now famous for his emergency landing of a USAir flight in the Hudson River. In case you don’t know the details, birds were sucked into…
