Safety’s Garden of Eden Complex One of the enduring myths of the risk and safety industry is the naive belief in paradise. Paradise is that mythical place where no-ne will be harmed. We see this nonsense yearning for utopia demonstrated in the Bradley Curve and the ideological nonsense of zero … [Read more...] about Safety’s Garden of Eden Complex
Bradley Curve
Safety Curves and Pyramids
For many years DuPont have perpetuated the myth that they are the “Worlds Safest Company” and a “world-class safety leader”. In the 1940s the company developed the safety philosophy that “all accidents are preventable”. Encouraged by their perception of success, DuPont eventually turned safety … [Read more...] about Safety Curves and Pyramids
Safety as Avoidance
Safety as Avoidance The language of ‘error’ is unhelpful when it comes to understanding human judgment and decision making. One can assemble pyramids of ‘unsafe acts’ and ‘unsafe conditions’, fault trees of ‘active and latent failures’, maps of ‘violations’, ‘slips’ and ‘missed barriers’, sets of … [Read more...] about Safety as Avoidance
Nonsense Curves and Pyramids
Nonsense Curves and Pyramids Safety likes nothing more than curves and pyramids, nothing so exciting as parading out the Bradley Curve or Heinrich’s Pyramid to get the troops excited about failure and loss. The Bradley Curve was created by DuPont in 1995 to try and benchmark notions of culture and … [Read more...] about Nonsense Curves and Pyramids