To Prevent All Injuries…You Need a Safety Angel

I’ve been involved in the safety industry from the perspective of safety incentives for many years, and have heard the statement “All injuries can be prevented” argued for decades.  At times the statement evolves into “All injuries can and should be prevented.”  That would be nice if it were true.

I suppose in theory these may be partially true, but in reality countless millions of injuries occur every day, everywhere and this has been happening forever.  Injuries are pervasive, but perhaps it’s the “everywhere” and “forever” that’s missing from a lot of the current theory regarding accidents and injuries on the job.

In order for the statement "All injuries can be prevented" to be true, everybody would have to be watching, doing and thinking about what they’re doing whenever they are moving (tough to get injured while you’re sleeping?).  Because once they move or start to move, the only thing that tells them what they could be moving into is their eyes or their mind, with the exception of planes and ships that also use radar and sonar.

Many years ago I asked a very experienced safety veteran what he would get if he could have anything he wanted to help prevent accidents; his answer was a “safety angel” on the shoulder of every one of his employees all day every day constantly whispering in the ear of his people to “Be Safe!”  Then he said even with that, there would still be accidents.  None of us could prove we have been using our eyes and our mind 100 percent of the time throughout the entire course of a business day.  And it’s at the one instant when we don’t that the accident happens. 

To err is human; we all make mistakes some more than others.  And everyone has made injury-causing mistakes and errors when our eyes or mind is not on task. How badly we got hurt is usually a function of luck.  Our behavior dictates whether we have an accident.  Not having our minds and our eyes on the task dictates whether we have an accident. 

You can argue that all injuries, as they relate to people being totally watchful and aware, are preventable.  Or is that just the angel on the shoulder?

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