A bulldozer manual had the following horrible warning in it:
Most accidents, regardless of their particular circumstances, are caused by someone's failure to observe and follow basic safety rules or precautions. For this reason, most accidents can be avoided by recognizing potentially hazardous situations and taking the necessary precautions to avoid them before an accident occurs.
So all we have to do, according to this warning, is tell workers to recognize and avoid the hazardous situation. If that were the case, we could take all the guards off of all the machines in America, tell the workers to be careful and nobody would ever get hurt. We could say to the injured worker, "What did you get hurt for? I told you to recognize the hazard and avoid it."
The truth is this: warnings are not better than guards. Warnings are required but they come only after appropriate safeguards have been attached to the machine.
Dr. Susan Baker, Professor of Health, Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Injury Prevention Center, said, "There is a warning that should be on all poorly safeguarded machines: It ought to say:
"Now, remember and don't forget.
Be careful. Don't make any mistakes.
None, not even one - - ever!" "
I consider it a privilege to sit in the witness stand and testify in a personal injury trial. When I am testifying for the injured plaintiff and the room is real quiet, what I really want to do is to create a real-world industrial environment for the jury.
What I want are some distractions in the room. I want to make it sound like the workplace. I want to have forklifts going by and some punch presses over to the side pounding and I want noises to distract everyone a little bit. You see, I want the jury to understand how the workplace really is. Then on top of that I would like to be able to illustrate the hazards that the workers are exposed to on a daily basis.
How many people do you know that have gotten hurt on their microwave oven because they didn't read the warning on the oven door? They left the door open and they turned the microwave on.
You don't know anybody, right? Why, because there is no warning on the microwave oven door. The microwave manufacturer foresaw this misuse and put a switch on the door of the microwave with the Safetythroughdesign™ concept that says, "I'm not going to let the microwave start until the doors are closed."
The Golden Gate Bridge is a beautiful bridge. Can you imagine driving across that bridge with no guard rails on the side. The designer would just put up a sign and say "Just drive straight and be careful." Of course this is ridiculous. Guards are essential and are of higher precedence than warnings. You have to think Safetythroughdesign™.
As to procedures, Dr. Baker went on to say, "There's not a training program today, and there never will be a training program that teaches people to never forget and never make a mistake."
Procedures are good. Procedures are needed. But workers will forget and they will make mistakes.
Hazard elimination and guarding by the designer will forgive workers who forget and make mistakes. You have to think Safetythroughdesign™.
Safetythroughdesign™ is a registered trademark of The Warren Group.