• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Psychosocial Safety
    • Resiliencing
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Hazards / The Illusion Of Hazard Identification

The Illusion Of Hazard Identification

September 15, 2016 by Admin 9 Comments

The Illusion Of Hazard Identification

Thanks to John Wettstein from safetystrategies.ca for suggesting this latest viral image and its link to hazard spotting.

imageI remember, many years ago, when I was a very dissonant Safety Consultant, being able to walk onto any site and spot a plethora of hitherto undiscovered and potentially deadly hazards – according to my coloured matrix anyway. My clients thought I was a genius!. I would provide a very comprehensive report with just enough subjective advice and quotes from the regulations to give them something to have them think they could fix safety and with just enough vital pieces withheld to keep me employed there for a bit longer. I would send them my invoice and some fancy snake oil brochures, then sit back and reflect on the ethics of “doing” safety this way when I was the only one really benefiting.

Truth is, I don’t have some innate ability or special gift for spotting hazards – I was just a “fresh pair of eyes” supported by an imagination not yet suppressed by some dumb down system. If you were to inspect my home shed or garage at the time then you would probably have called it a death trap – the reason we don’t see everything is a complex matter of cognition, experience, perception, conditioning and all influenced a vast array of unconscious biases (see Bias – You Wonder Why Traditional Safety Can Never Work).

If you have a few hours to spare and a very open mind then there is a lot to discover if you just type “unconscious” into our search box – or follow this link to where I have already done that for you: https://safetyrisk.net/?s=unconscious 

Dr Rob Long explains this really well and succinctly here Hazard Identification where he says:

When it comes to hazards, all hazards are neutral until activated by the risk of the user. A hazard won’t hurt anyone until a user comes in contact with it. So, there is no real separation between hazards and risk. Of course, if the perception of the user is limited by misdirection or selective attention, then the hazard will not be seen and what happens is triggered not by ignorance but perception blindness. The identification of hazards is neither automatic nor ‘common sense’ but relies upon experience, training and intuition, established over time. The identification of hazards also relies heavily on the perception of the user and their cognitive and visual ability. All humans are subject to over 200 biases in cognition and visual perception. In other words, all humans are fallible and are prone to miss things, even the identification of hazards and risks. This is why the issue of working alone increases risk.

The focus exclusively on hazards is not helpful and needs to also take in to account the perceptions and motivation of the user. If the user is risk averse, then they will develop limited risk intelligence and will not be able to make ‘educated/calculated guesses’ in times of uncertainty. This will also include the ability to identify hazards and risk. This ability to exercise ‘risk intelligence’ is what helps us join the dots together when we experience turbulence or the unknown at work.

Optical Illusions

Many of you would have seen this latest (ie viral) optical illusion. There are 12 black dots in this image and this article in THE VERGE tries to explain why you just can’t see all twelve black dots in this optical illusion. I love this quote from that article and I think it may resonate with anyone who is frustrated with the way we currently ‘do’ Safety and Risk

“They think, ‘It’s an existential crisis,'” says Derek Arnold, a vision scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia. “‘How can I ever know what the truth is?'” But, he adds, scientists who study the visual system know that perception doesn’t always equal reality.

So, if we can’t even see 12 black dots on a small square on a computer screen, how confident should we be that we will ever see or identify all the hazards in our workplace or even find “the truth” when we do one of our ‘systematic’ incident investigations? (Another must read is: Just Get to the Bottom of it )

 

image

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Hazards, Investigation, Risk Assessment Templates, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: hazard identification, illusion

Reader Interactions

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,523 other subscribers

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Chris. on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Pierre Joubert on Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • James on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Admin on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe

The KISS of Death in Safety

Is Your Safety World Too Small?

You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

When Safety (Zero) is Abusive

Hands Up the Best Safety Fraud!

Communicating Professionally in Risk

How NOT to be Professional in Safety

How NOT to do Anything About Culture in Building and Construction

Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS
  • Safety Acronyms
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • What Is Safety?

Recent Posts

  • What’s Your Agenda in Safety?
  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • Beware the Cult of Denial
  • My Story is Better than Yours
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process
  • The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble
  • Understanding Language Influencing, A Video
  • Safetie
  • You are NOT the Sum of Safety
  • Update on SPoR in India, Brazil and Europe
  • It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Safety at the Margins
  • Research Basics for Safety
  • We Need Communities and They Need Us
  • Researching Within The Safety Echo Chamber
  • Confirmation Bias, Risk and Being Offensive
  • Lemmings for Lemmings in Leadership and Risk
  • Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging
  • Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • Can There Be Other Valid Worldviews Than Safety?
  • Evaluating Value by the Value of What You Don’t Know
  • Reality vs Theory, The Binary Divide
  • No Paradigm Shift with BBS
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Is Your Safety World Too Small?
  • What Does Safety Achieve?
  • In Praise of Balance in Risk and the Threat of Extremism
  • We are all equal
  • You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • What in the (Risk & Safety) World is Imagination?
  • iCue Engagement Process
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • For the Monarchists of Safety
  • The Sully Effect
  • All Things Must Pass in Risk
  • Scapegoating and Safety
  • Understanding Habit, Habituation and Change
  • Don’t Mention the War
  • Safety in Design for Who by Who?
  • Beyond ‘What We Do Around Here’
  • Asking the Wrong Questions
  • When Safety (Zero) is Abusive
  • Mandala as a Method for Tackling an Ethic of Risk (a Video)
  • Safety Cosmetics
  • Visualising the EHS Role
  • Towards Dumb
  • Workshops with Dr Long – Vienna, Austria 26-30 June 2023
  • Visual, Verbal and Relational Mapping in Risk Assessment
  • Abduction in Risk and Safety

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

Keep Discovering

Listening, Learning, Helping and Caring about Risk

Checklist Seduction and The Delusion of Data

Amping it Up in Safety

STEM Safety in Drag

The Brain as Computer Myth

The Domino Myth in Safety

Visualising Risk

The Religion of Safety

Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives

Data Cannot Drive Vision

Safety as Policing

Safety as a Patriarchal Activity

SPoR Ontology and Methods – A Video

Please Don’t Try to Fix Me – I’m Not a Machine

It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!

Holistic Responses to Mental Health

Learning Styles Matter

The New Enemy of Safety – The Unconscious

When Slogans Don’t Work

Hoodwinked by Heinrich

The Hero Myth in Modern Management

Free Books – 66 Downloads for Tackling Risk

Risky Conversations, The Law, Social Psychology and Risk

Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…

Acceptable Risk as a Decision Making Process

What or Who Is Safety?

Language Shapes Culture in Risk

Look With Your Heart and Not With Your Eyes

Rituals in Risk Management – Podcast

Visual Learning and Envisioning Risk

How I Feel About Risk

Centre for Leadership and Learning in Risk (CLLR)–Study Calendar

SPoR and Disposing of Bad Myths

The Link Between Think and Blink

Visualising the EHS Role

International Workshops – Belgium

A must watch risk and safety video

‘Pause and Ponder’ – what we can learn from social psychology academics

Safety For the Common Good

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,523 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY

x
x