quotable quote: “The use of silly and meaningless safety language matters, it creates a distraction and delusion that safety and risk are being addressed. We may feel good about speaking such words but they dumb down culture and distract people from taking safety seriously”. All Injuries are … [Read more...] about All Injuries are Preventable and Other Silly Safety Sayings
Zero Harm
The Lexicon of Safety Gibberish
The Lexicon of Safety Gibberish Gibberish or gobbledygook refers to speech that is nonsensical. Gibberish often takes the form of unrecognisable sounds and noise that when defined don’t make sense. Even the most cursory glance at research on ‘framing’ and ‘priming’ of language (eg. Fairhurst, The … [Read more...] about The Lexicon of Safety Gibberish
It’s a Risky Christmas
It’s a Risky Christmas - A Xmas Safety Poem without the word Safety In it: “So what is the rush to complete stuff before the end of the year about... here is a little poem that puts the highlight on the dangers of rushing to complete at Christmas time; it is about safety without mentioning safety” … [Read more...] about It’s a Risky Christmas
It’s a Great Goal, it Just Doesn’t Work
It's a Great Goal, it Just Doesn't Work Everyday a man walks down the street of a small country town in South Australia and waves his arms about squawking like a parrot, he has been doing this for several years. One day a visiting policeman sees him and asks him what he is doing. 'It's easy' he … [Read more...] about It’s a Great Goal, it Just Doesn’t Work
How many do you want harmed today?
How many do you want harmed today? It seems not a week goes by on Linkedin without the perpetual Safety demonstration of nonsense talk, nonsense language, life denying, fallibility denying and the immortality delusional semiotics of zero. As usual it starts with the silly binary question ‘How many … [Read more...] about How many do you want harmed today?
Safety as Faith Healing
Just yesterday I was told, again, that if If don't believe in zero harm then I must want people to get hurt and therefore have no right to be in safety! Our recent article on the problems with “fire and brimstone safety” stirred up some debate about the ineffectiveness of negative safety stories and … [Read more...] about Safety as Faith Healing
Stop the Train I Want to Get Off
Stop the Train I Want to Get Off I accepted a job this week to research amongst other things; suicide, near miss and other events in rail (good luck Dumb Ways to Die). I am working with a provider who has all the National data on the subject. As with any research project one must start with … [Read more...] about Stop the Train I Want to Get Off
Safety Leadership
Safety Leadership is not the Basics – 20 Suggestions of Where to Start A very popular one from the archives When you do a search on the internet for 'safety leadership' the first hit that comes up is a QLD Government handout, a ‘toolkit for safety leadership’ Can you imagine what the zero harm … [Read more...] about Safety Leadership
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
Supernatural Safety
Supernatural Safety Talking about the supernatural is not in vogue these days. The membership of the church is in rapid decline, there’s no longer ‘scripture’ in schools and the history of unethical behaviour by the clergy has put religion ‘on the nose’. So there’s not much talk of miracles, … [Read more...] about Supernatural Safety