More Controls Doesn’t Always Equal More Safety

I learned a long time ago that more control doesn’t always equal more safety. Indeed, he repetition of the language of ‘controls’ often promotes less thinking and less safety.

Many years ago, I was a teacher in a regional Area school in South Australia and lived at the end of a bus run on a 20,000 hectare Murray Grey Cattle Stud. There were eight bus runs at the school that picked up most of the children from the many farms in the area and brought them into school and took them home after school. This meant we were up early and home late as school started at 9am and finished at 3.30pm. My bus carried 35 and took 90 minutes.

You can see a picture of the old 365 with my wife in front of the bus, taken 52 years ago, back when mini-skirts were in fashion. Helen taught Kinder/Year One and I taught years 6/7.

There were many things learned in those early years of teaching not just from living in a remote area but also from bus-driving, isolation and managing risk and safety on a treacherous dirt road that was only graded once a year.

All the roads driven by the bus drivers-as-teachers at the time were dirt roads that were narrow and went up and down long hills. It was common the get to the rise of a hill only to be met by a ute or truck going the other way, with very little space between vehicles. Except I had other people’s children on board. Moreso, I had to learn very quickly all the tricks in the book about behaviour management whilst also driving a bus, stopping for pick-ups and waiting for kids to arrive. Everything was made more complex when it was raining and much worse with a downpour. Sometimes I would be only doing 40kms and hour and could still feel the bus sliding sideways and drifting in an aquaplane across the hardened dirt.

The year before this I had another bus route on the other side of the school that headed south west that had only 24 children and only took 45 minutes to finish. The 365 was the longest and most treacherous bus route at the school.

At the end of my first year driving the 365 some bright spark from Adelaide decided it would be a good idea for safety to put a speed governor on my petrol-driven manual gear-box bus. Th gear box had eight gears.

In theory, the idea of speed-limiting a bus sounds like a good idea, particularly when you don’t understand risk. Slower bus somehow equals safer driving. The opposite was the case. Put a governor on the engine of the bus actually gave me less power and control at critical times. On several occasions I had no power at my foot, just when I needed it. What seemed like a safety control made my job of driving more risky.

So, after meeting with others drivers, speaking to the Principal and Deputy Principal of the school (who both had to act as relief drivers), I wrote to the Education Department to get the governor taken off my bus.

Can you imagine how hard it was to shift the thinking and belief of someone who believes that more control equals more safety. How challenging it is to shift the beliefs of others who think they know safety but have never had your own experience.

I invited the policy officer in Adelaide to come and join me on my bus to experience my reality. Can you imagine going down a hill and the engine cutting out and then repowering as you try to go up the next hill but have no power to make it.

Here I was working my guts out needlessly up and down hills with 30 kids misbehaving on a bus, with poor vision in the rain and no power to pull out of a slide?

The idea that more control equals more safety is a myth, not just with buses but with many things. Extra control also doesn’t work with management. Micro-management is a disaster for anyone leadership. The truth is, surrendering power and control is the art of real leadership.

So, the governor was kept on the bus for only a few months until we received the authority to have it taken off. The mechanic and local policeman in town and I took bets for how long a bureaucrat in Adelaide would block the process and I lost the bet.

This was my second year out teaching and there were many lessons to be learned in and out of school.

There have been many occasions since my bus lesson that have taught me that more controls don’t mean more safety. Indeed, I have seen some of the silliest things put in place by safety crusaders as ‘controls’ (who have no experience in actually doing the job) that actually make the job less safe.

I remember once helping my brother with a risk assessment at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross. Wayside has an intake counter that takes in some of the most high-risk people in the city. Worksafe inspectors had come in and suggested that the reception area required a perspex window to keep people behind the counter ‘safe’. My brother, the Manager of Wayside Chapel knew immediately that such a ‘control’ would immediately aggravate and antagonise people who came in seeking relationships, listening, care and engagement.

Ah yes, but Worksafe knew better about controls. Luckily for Graham, he knew people in very high and powerful places (the NSW Governor and the state premier and some politicians were patrons). It took two phone calls and the order for the perpex window was quickly removed.

Graham and the staff at Wayside knew that the best way to manage risk was with critical skills in descalation not physical controls.

I guess one of the lessons in all of this is, consult and listen with people who do the job. The other lesson is to be flexible in beliefs. Be prepared to suspend belief in the face of expertise.

Karl Weick (https://safetyrisk.net/weick-collection/) used to say that we should be focused on the front line not the back room. This is where Weick’s idea of bricolage finds good ground.

When faced with risk as a wicked problem, adaptability is one’s greatest capability NOT controls.

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Prof. Robert Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

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PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.