In fallibility, there is no such thing as prediction of an accident unless you are a magician, wizard or god.
So, a pre-accident is just normal everyday life. In Australia, if you re-name something obvious as something else, we call that ‘being clever by half’.
Simialrly, there is also no such thing as a pre-accident investigation. You can’t investigate something that has not happened. This is the kind of linguistics one concocts in preparation for a séance. I went to a séance once and it was quite a ‘performance’.
BTW, Performance is not ‘a degree of variation or deviation from an expectation’. This is a definition anchored to performance management ideology not the semiotics, poetics or theatrics of performance (https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781134465125_A25034080/preview-9781134465125_A25034080.pdf). Performance is essentially about what one presents, what one shows.
One can talk endlessly about what one ‘expects’ but there is never an assurance that what one expects will be ‘performed’.
Similarly, ‘Safety is not the absence of events but the presence of defenses’. Safety is a temporary moment in time when one is aware of one’s safety but even then, one is never safe. Safety is not a state of being, it is a state in passing and in the movement of life one is never safe: psychologically, psychically, medically, spiritually, physically or socially. We call this state, fallibility. Similarly, no-one drifts into failure, in fallibility we are always in failure, we are always imperfect.
The best way to think about life and living is not through the machinations of this kind of ‘safety-speak’. Such a fixation on safety as a lens for understanding life and being, is a psychosis.
The same applies for thinking about error.
None of this thinking about pre-accidents, error, safety and performance is new or ‘different’. It’s all just traditional safety, marketed as what it is not (https://safetyrisk.net/declaring-what-is-by-what-isnt-hop-as-traditional-safety/). The SD, S2, NV, RE and HOP view is a rebadging of the old view. It’s still all about outcomes, error, failure, prevention, measurement and the mechanics of performance.
Any simple discourse analysis will show that all of this stuff is the same methodology as traditional safety. It’s still all about outcomes, error, failure, prevention, measurement and the mechanics of performance. Just good olde traditional safety culture. The same discourse analysis will show what is not spoken about: resilience, helping, ethics, moral meaning, care and personhood.
This is why so much of what circulates about safety today being called ‘differently’ is just entertainment. In the desperate search for a methodology, it’s more ‘bread and circuses’. No wonder the next trend is ‘punk rock safety’ but even then, it’s all just the same old safety stuff. It’s still all about outcomes, error, failure, prevention, measurement and the mechanics of performance.
If you are interested in tackling risk and the wicked problem of life and being, perhaps you might like to look here: https://safetyrisk.net/tackling-wicked-problems/
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- Understanding the Nature of Performance and HOP - October 5, 2024
- If You Want to Know About Mental Health, Don’t Ask Safety - September 30, 2024
- Its all About Behaviours - September 20, 2024
- I Wasn’t Thinking Mr Spock - September 20, 2024
- The Seduction of Drift in Safety - September 20, 2024
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