Are All Accidents Preventable?

If there’s one discussion I’ve had with safety professionals over the years it has been the question…”Are all accidents preventable? If you limit yourself to one word with one syllable answers…without clarification, semantic interpretation or other definition in my opinion the answer has to be a resounding NO!  When you start to broaden the question, is when you can come to a place where a good answer might be yes or yes with a qualifying couple of over words…yes in theory, yes in hindsight.  But because we are human, we will all have accidents.

Every one of us knows of workplaces that have in fact been “accident free” for a time.  Non-reporting notwithstanding, it can be done.  But it can’t and won’t be sustained.  There will be an accident; it’s just a matter of when.  After a century of more or less serious safety management, we are still seeing thousands of accidents in the workplace.  So what do we do with the goal of “Zero Accidents?”  From the standpoint of accident prevention, that goal is just fine.  It is what all of us should shoot for, under the premise that it’s like “reaching for the stars.”  Even if we miss we landed on the moon.

As all accidents are based on human behavior, wouldn’t a better goal be Zero Accident Behaviors? If we eliminate unsafe behavior will we achieve zero accidents?  Still, many may argue that some things simple cannot be prevented.  So where does that leave us? We cannot prevent everything, but that doesn’t take away the responsibility for us to try as hard as we can within reasonable boundaries. And a great place to start is to eliminate those behaviors that cause the accidents in the first place.  Creating a habit of safe behavior is something that can be learned.

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