Safety Sacraments and Rituals As Australians approach the time of year most dense with symbolism (ANZAC and Easter), it may be helpful to ponder the nature, power and significance of symbols, sacraments and rituals in relation to the safety industry. After all, the safety industry is now imbued with as many rituals as any religion, […]
vision zero
Zero Vision but Purchase Insurance
Zero Vision but Purchase Insurance One of the realities of maturity in fallibility is understanding finiteness, vulnerability and risk. The profession of infallibility is a sign of a mental health problem. It’s because we don’t talk non-sense to ourselves that we purchase insurance. It’s because we know human life is random and not in our […]
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Safety’s Garden of Eden Complex
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 harm. The yearning for a […]
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Vision Can’t Come from Safety Compliance
Vision Can’t Come from Safety Compliance One of the spin offs, trade-offs and by-products of Vision Zero is a lack of vision. The idea of vision comes from more than just seeing something but rather seeing beyond something. I will be writing about this in my next book Envisioning Risk, Signs and Symbols in Risk. […]
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Zero Discourse as Gobbledygook
Zero Discourse as Gobbledygook When we communicate or are communicated to, we like things to be coherent. Coherence allows us to hold things together so that the message makes sense. When people speak non-sense to others that is incoherent, the outcome is: confusion, misunderstanding and no clarity. The establishment of Collective Coherence is the purpose […]
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Zero Accident Vision Non-Sense
Zero Accident Vision Non-Sense You won’t read much more propagandist non-sense than this article about Zero Accident Vision . If one applies any skill of critical thinking (which of course safety doesn’t study) to this article one will see it as nothing more than propaganda (https://safetyrisk.net/zero-vision-as-propaganda/). Assertion is not evidence despite that fact that one claims […]
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The Trajectory of Zero Vision
The Trajectory of Zero Vision We know that all goals are psychologically laden (Moscowitz and Grant , The Psychology of Goals) that is, when we set goals they often conceal psychological dynamics. Often we don’t know the trade-offs or by-products of goal setting until much later in the strategic thinking process (Raynor. The Strategy Paradox). […]
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Zero Vision as Propaganda
Zero Vision as Propaganda Propaganda is the ideological manipulation of ideas to support and defend political interests. Ellul (1973, p. 61. ) states: ‘Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through […]
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Don’t Dare Speak the ‘f’ Word
Don’t Dare Speak the ‘f’ Word The claim that Zero Vision ‘works’ has more in common with ‘faith healing’ (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-faith-healing-2/ ) than critical thinking. Dekker (2017, Zero Vision: enlightenment and new religion. Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14773996.2017.1314070) demonstrates this clearly and asserts that such ‘attributions’ are fundamentally religious and certainly have no […]
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SIA has a Bet ‘Each Way’ on Zero
SIA has a Bet ‘Each Way’ on Zero Following in the wake of the Vision Zero spectacle at the XXI World Congress on Safety and Health at Work 2017 the SIA decided to release a statement on Zero on 20 September 2017. The Statement is nothing short of simple spin-doctoring to ‘have a bet each […]
