Another reason is that his concocted ratios, dominoes and pyramids suit the biases of safety indoctrination. You can see a good overview of Heinrich Humbug here: https://safetyrisk.net/deconstructing-the-myth-of-heinrich/
In the blog ‘Hoodwinked by Heinrich’ (https://safetyrisk.net/hoodwinked-by-heinrich/ ) you can see examples of Heinrich’s naïve discourse (extracts from the text) about ‘willful disregard of instructions’, ‘recklessness, violent temper and ‘sub-conscious indifference’ to risk. All from an insurance salesman with no expertise in psychology or the nature of the unconscious.
Of course, Heinrich had no expertise either in safety, science, culture, semiotics, heuristics, neuroscience or sociology, the perfect combination for finding a following in safety. The same applies across safety whether it be engineers spruiking culture (don’t talk about safety culture), anthropology, mythology or theology (eg. Dekker on atonement). Roll up, roll up, and sign up for a study in ethics delivered by an engineer! (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/) This is the safety way.
If you read anything from Heinrich you will find the most outrageous discourse and judgmentalism in all he puts forward. A wonderful foundation for setting up safety mythology about injury rates, ratios and the nonsense ideology of zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).
One of Heinrich’s favourite words is ‘reckless’. This resonates wonderfully with the Bradley Curve (to come years later) that proposes that humans have a ‘natural instinct’ for harm. This is utter nonsense. All humans have a natural instinct for self-preservation and sustainability. This is known as allostasis (https://safetyrisk.net/allostasis-and-homeostasis-in-risk/). The same Heinrich foundation also helped set the way from the linearity of Reason (swiss-cheese) and Dekker (tunnel) to follow but none of this is real. It’s just more traditional safety mythology.
Yet, the myths of Bradley, Dekker, Reason and Heinrich continue to dominate safety texts.
Only sources that have no idea of the nature of the human unconscious propose that the unconscious is the source of harm. It is the opposite.
But, not so for Heinrich’s ‘Scientific Approach’. Only Heinrich can read minds and determine the ‘willful recklessness’ of workers with a suicide wish. Only Heinrich can read the human unconscious. Only Heinrich knows about the ‘underdeveloped mentalities’ of workers and that ‘immigrants are of a better type’. Not bad eh, for an insurance salesman with not a clue of anthropology or ethnology (p.75). Yet, Heinrich knows (p.74) ‘workers interest in safety are like a salesman’s interests in a customer’.
Of course, after making dozens of judgmental pronouncements in psychology, anthropology, sociology and ethnology, Heinrich concludes (p.95) with a caveat on p95 that ‘no attempt has been made to express the principles of either analytic or introspective psychology. Nor, are the preceding statements and suggestions based on professional knowledge of industrial psychology or psychiatry’. But, he makes such comments anyway.
This is what Safety does. It proclaims no expertise in theology then writes a book on the theology of suffering! It states, ‘I have no expertise in ethics’ but come and learn ethics from an engineer! I know nothing about culture but come and read a book written by Safety on culture.
One of the fun chapters of Heinrich is called ‘Fact Finding’ (Chapter 4) which of course is NOT about facts or history but Heinrich speculations.
In this chapter Heinrich redefines the notion of ‘accident’ and proposes that no accident is ‘unforseen’. Well done Herbert, a wonderful re-definition of reality that makes every worker responsible for not looking into the future (p.102). I know, let’s correct the dictionary meaning because it doesn’t suit our psychology that we have no expertise in, nor any expertise in Linguistics! Didn’t you know, workers must be infallible. Workers consciously want to harm themselves. There we go. There’s the problem. Humans! Willful reckless humans!
Heinrich loves to litter his text with the language of ‘facts’ that are NOT facts but concoctions of a salesman eager to sell insurance to an audience looking for solutions to accidents.
Then when you get to the end of the book you are told you have been reading a ‘story of scientific accident prevention’ and a ‘corollary facts of causation’. The book has nothing do with anything of what is claimed.
You would get better value and intelligence in safety from reading Cinderella.
It’s about time that all the Heinrich Humbug was taken out of safety texts so that the industry might grow up and mature in the way it understands and tackles risk.
If you are looking for a more mature alternative to Heinrich Humbug you can do the free Introduction to SPoR program here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/4233556
And, if you would like further coaching or tuition in a positive and constructive alternative to traditional safety that works, you can write here: admin@spor.com.au
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/heinrich-humbug/
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