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Those of us in blue-collar occupations (and many of us who aren't) have seen “safety culture” grow at a marvelous rate over the last little while. Safety is number one, safety is the first priority, safety safety safety.
While
it is difficult to argue against safety as an abstract value, it is
easy to argue that contemporary safety culture is a bin of weasel
nuts.
No
matter how important safety is, there comes a point where safety is a
malinvestment. I argue that we have in many circumstances passed
that point.
The Grim Unknown
One
reason for the over-emphasis on safety is that both injuries &
certain safety practices lends themselves to measurement while
prevented injuries do not.
Great
difficulty and ingenuity is spent to contrast what has happened with
what would have otherwise happened. This could easily be an argument
against safety practices because their effectiveness is a hard thing
to measure, but in this case it makes a lot of sense: imagine a
lottery where purchasing tickets increased your chances, not of
acquiring a mega-yacht, but of avoiding being run over by Hillary
Clinton in a station wagon?
While
non-participation in a conventional lottery means forfeiting the
infinitesimal chance of “the big win” (as well as the very
concrete expense of all those tickets), non-participation in the
safety lottery means unmeasurable-but-increased exposure to unknown
risks at an unknown frequency.
Safety
is therefore a sort of insurance against unknown but grim outcomes.
Where
the price of failure is expensive to discover it makes sense to
purchase (probably) unnecessary levels of insurance just to be safe.
This
would probably work out pretty well if it weren't for an additional
twist – Liability.
Liability
Legal
liability adds an additional level of threat to companies, one that
dwarfs everything else.
It
is easy to implement a monthly safety observation quota. It is easy
to implement a recurrent managerial “hazard hunt.” The visible
costs are low. The worst-case scenario being guarded against is
frighteningly costly.
We
have created a system where the success or failure of an enterprise
hinges upon its ability to avoid liability. Liability shifts the
costs from the individual to the organization. Where idiots once had
to pay a stupidity tax in the form of pain, financial hardship, or
even loss of life, now the organization is culpable.
Organizations
have deeper pockets with softer limits than individuals. Combined
with the cultural shift towards placing blame on systems than on
individuals it is easier to stomach destroying a company than letting
individuals shoulder the punishment themselves.
It
doesn't help that the boundary between system design and individual
choice is soft and fluid. Where do the company's responsibilities
end? It sure seems “safer” to place the lion's share of burden
on the company, but this increases the total costs of the system
because the individual is more efficient at some things than the
group.
Results
We
have built an entire economy around ascribing value to non-events,
which are grossly difficult to measure. We value acute events
disproportionately to chronic, low-level events. We base our
concerns upon information provided by third parties instead of our
own experience. This results in behavioral distortions.
Because
non-events are impossible to quantify we instead rely on procedures.
This leads to the development of two layers in companies; the
managerial layer, which is auditable & where the lawyers play,
and the productive layer, which is opaque.
The
lawyers' job is to entertain the other lawyers and dance the
don't-fine-me dance. They are unproductive and are supported by the
productive layer, which must must figure out ways to (seem to) comply
or else the entire operation becomes unsustainable.
School
shootings are an emotionally wrenching topic that attract unlimited
funding to combat, but the measures taken are expensive & useless
(scanners) or dangerous on a low level that doesn't register on the
decision-making level (bollards). Money is spent on things that
provide little value or even lead to routine loss of life.
Television
exacerbates the situation by focusing only on the high-profile
problems & giving little to no coverage to the distributed
problems that account for the bulk of costs and injuries.
Conclusion
I
just went through another round of safety training and am cranky
about it.
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