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

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

Discover More on this Site

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • 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
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • 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
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long 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!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2020
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus) 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
    • 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

There is Another Ethic than Zero Accidents

October 4, 2016 by Admin 2 Comments

Editors note: In a comment in the article “The Worm at The Core” a reader directed me to an article by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in which they decree that “Accidents are not approved or permitted”  – That statement really did something to me so this article by Dr Rob Long was very apt and timely for me. There is some interesting semiotics in this image I found – this is a safety poster being sold by The Safety Poster Shop – how long do you think it would last on a building site before being defaced?

There is Another Ethic than Zero Accidents

zero accidentsOne of the beliefs of the Zero Accident Vision and Netwerk is: ‘zero is the only ethically sustainable goal for safety and health’ (http://www.zeroaccidents.nl/over-het-netwerk/about/ ). The Zero Accident Vision group at least recognize that this is about a philosophy (https://oshwiki.eu/wiki/Zero_accident_vision) rather than about numerics.

This philosophy is a philosophy of denial because its ‘is based on the belief that all accidents are preventable’. So, embedded in this philosophy is both an ideology of perfection and a denial of fallibility, randomness and uncertainty. A philosophy that is founded on the possibility of perfection and absolutes must have a trajectory that is dehumanizing. Despite this, the philosophy talks about ‘learning’ even though it cannot logically hold to such an aspiration in tension with its own absolute. Neither can it ‘leave room for the unexpected’ because the foundation for the philosophy founded in perfection denies it.

Despite that fact that ZAV claims success (which must mean the achievement of the sustainability of zero – http://www.zeroaccidents.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/TNO-publication-Sustainable-Safety-Visions-and-Perspectives-symposium-at….pdf), which is impossible in the real world. Of course, there is no evidence for this absurd claim, it’s just more spin generated by the ideology that believes its own assumptions and strikes fear into anyone who challenges their claims. Similarly the claim that: ‘The importance and benefits of implementing Zero Accident Vision are undeniable’ (https://oshwiki.eu/wiki/Zero_accident_vision ). Again, there is no evidence that the implementation of a ZAV philosophy improves the management of people and risk. However, there is extensive evidence to demonstrate that perfectionism and absolutes create ethical and moral dilemmas for humans. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200803/pitfalls-perfectionism, http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov03/manyfaces.aspx, https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/perfectionism_(psychology).htm, http://www.hrpub.org/download/20160630/UJER17-19506801.pdf )

The ZAV philosophy also states, ‘The Zero Accident Vision does not accept that accidents simply happen because of bad luck, Human error or haste are often seen as the root cause of an accident’. So apparently, there is no randomness and no ‘misfortune’ in life, a sure foundation and trajectory for blaming, anti-learning and tyranny. Can someone please pass this philosophy onto the gambling fraternity and insurance companies and put them out of business?

One of the key reasons for having a philosophy is having consistency within itself. Unfortunately, the ZAV has no consistency with its own assumptions and ideological foundations. So ZAV accepts there is no bad luck but does accept that it must ‘leave room for the unexpected’??? I wonder what the unexpected is??? ZAV states: ‘Leaving room for the unexpected is important if one is striving for zero accidents’. So, if the unexpected exists, which means humans and systems are not infallible, then there can never be perfection of zero harm.

However, it is this claim that: ‘zero is the only ethically sustainable goal for safety and health’ (http://www.zeroaccidents.nl/over-het-netwerk/about/) that I wish to challenge. This claim is premised on binary logic and as such undertakes an absolutist ethic that corresponds to its zero tolerance discourse. The trouble is, there is nothing virtuous about zero. Zero has no room for tolerance, no room for learning, no room for mistakes and no room for bad luck and ‘misfortune’. Zero is absolute.

Everything within this ZAV ethic remains focused on calculative thinking and numerics, for example: ‘In addition, the Zero Accident Vision is a useful way of thinking when numerical goals for accidents are set, because it considers that all accidents to be preventable.’ Yet strangely ZAV claims: ‘Transparency in information sharing is an important tool in co-operation towards better safety within an organisation’. Quite simply there can be no transparency nor cooperation when there is a discourse of zero. It has been demonstrated over and over again that zero discourse promotes hiding, fear and under-reporting. See the recent discussion on Deepwater Horizon (https://safetyrisk.net/deepwater-horizon-and-the-suppression-of-risky-conversations/) where there is a direct connection between the ideology of zero in BP and the suppression of conversations about risk.

The ethic of ZAV is also an ethic of emotivism, as MacIntyre (1987, A Study in Moral Theory) states: ‘Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing more but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude and feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character’ (p. 12). Unfortunately, emotivism is not an ethic with meaning but rather an ethic of preference.

Whilst we all would have a preference that no one should be harmed, this doesn’t validate a binary ethic of intolerance. Indeed, there are other ethical positions other than the ZAV binary absolute. The statement that there is no other ethic that ZAV is simply not true. The ZAV ethic is profoundly religious in nature (https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:398943) and its claims to an ethic and ideology ought to be viewed in this light. On the other hand a situational ethic that considers the reality of the human condition and complexity, is a humanizing ethic.

A situational ethic of tolerance doesn’t necessarily imply the binary entrapment of ZAV nor the desire for harm. Indeed, a situational ethic that bases an ethic in the realities of fallibility, uncertainty and randomness honours the reality of being human in the world rather than creating an ethic that only succeeds when humans become super-humans. The ethic of the super-human is the ethic of Nietzsche (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche) and has no place in tackling risk. Such an ethic lays the foundation for the despot and places the value of objects over humans.

For an understanding of the full implications of the ZAV ethic perhaps read Mizzoni (2010), Ethics the Basics.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Ethics, Human Error, Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk, Zero Harm Tagged With: ethics, zero accident, Zero Harm

Reader Interactions

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

Primary Sidebar

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

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 21,303,985 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join over 30,000 other discerning safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Michael Dale on You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Wynand on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Wynand on Poisoning the Professional Waterhole
  • Rob Long on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Rob Long on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Bernard Corden on Sin-Eaters for Safety
  • Bernard Corden on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Audrey Silver on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Rob Long on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Andrew Floyd on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Presenting-Dos-and-Donts.pdf (352 downloads)
  • Risk-Unplugged-Peter-Ribbe.pdf (1115 downloads)
  • My_Defining Moments in Safety .pdf (2076 downloads)
  • Active Living at Work (13752 downloads)
  • Real Risk by Dr Rob Long (836 downloads)
  • Covid-19 Work From Home Safety Checklist (4638 downloads)
  • Guidance-FOR-the-beginning-OHS-professiona1.docx (20860 downloads)
  • template_training_needs.xls (2983 downloads)
  • National-Emergency-Risk-Assessment-Guidelines.pdf (1187 downloads)
  • Telecommuting Safety Checklist (9167 downloads)
  • Europe-SPoR-Workshop-Flyer.pdf (196 downloads)
  • Sample-risk-assessment-form.xls (25456 downloads)
  • Falls-Risk-Assessment-Tool.pdf (1879 downloads)
  • 2016AmericasSafestCompanies.pdf (1306 downloads)
  • Effective-Safety-Management-Systems.docx (4988 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Poisoning the Professional Waterhole
  • Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • The Seduction of Slogans in Safety
  • Certificate, Diploma and Masters Studies in SPoR
  • Measurement Anxiety in Safety
  • Are You a Safety Clown?
  • The Quantitative and Qualitative Divide in Safety
  • Balance in Risk and Safety
  • It’s Always About Paperwork

Footer

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • AHH$ Covid$afe Chri$tma$ New$letter
    • Paradise by the dashboard light
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
    • What and how should we measure to support recovery from injury?
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • Who is Responsible for This?
    • Who Are Your People?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • It was the SIA until someone wanted to swing from the Chandelier
    • Common Sense is Remarkably Uncommon
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
    • Misleading Indicators
  • Admin
    • Certificate, Diploma and Masters Studies in SPoR
    • Merry Covid Xmas–2020
  • Dr Rob Long
    • You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
    • Poisoning the Professional Waterhole
  • Rob Sams
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
    • Social ‘Resiliencing’
  • Barry Spud
    • Barry Spud’s Hazard Control Tips
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

FEATURED POSTS

Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety

Ten Risk and Safety Program Essentials

Understanding How People Make Decisions and Judgments

The Common Sense Fallacy

Is Safety a Choice You Make?

A Professional Ethic of Risk

The SEEK Investigations Donut

Something’s gotta give..

Stirring the OHS pot

The Dance of Death and Randomness

Humanising Workplace Health and Safety Management

Safety – Learning by Doing and Learning by Theory

cut finger

Confirmity in Conformity

Wisdom, Discernment and an Ethic of Safety

The Illusion Of Opposites

Accidents Happen Because You Don’t Put Safety First

What is a Safety and Risk ‘Thinking Group’?

Sticks and Stones and the Nonsense of Zero Harm

Why Some People Never Achieve

Safety’s Garden of Eden Complex

More Posts from this Category

Paperwork

https://vimeo.com/162034157?loop=0

Due Diligence

https://vimeo.com/162493843?loop=0

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.