It’s simply amusing to observe organisations in safety, offering ‘prevention programs’ for the natural status of fallibility. Here is the big promise: ‘we are the only ones that can stop mistakes and error!’ Really? Come in spinner, yet another con in the safety industry.

Any language that speaks about stopping error and mistakes is delusional nonsense.

Just 10 minutes ago I was walking to my front door, went to put in the key in the lock and dropped the keys. I would drop something at least a few times each day. Lapses in concentration and mis-direction in focus is a common attribute of being human. This doesn’t mean that I encourage drops or slips but then again, I don’t demonise drops and slips as some kind of ‘safety is a choice’ nonsense.

This saying: ‘safety is a choice you make’ is them lost dangerous mantra for an industry that has no idea about human fallibility or decision making indeed, it never speaks of either. How convenient!

95% of all we do as humans doesn’t involves ‘choice’. Humans are not rational beings. Most human decision making is embodied, unconscious and automatic. Safety is not a rational choice just as un-safety is NOT a rational choice. The whole discourse of ‘choice’ ignores the fundamental realities of context, social being and hundreds of influences that are beyond human control.

Of course, this is why Safety loves the promises of Behaviourism (https://safetyrisk.net/why-safety-is-attracted-to-behaviourism/ ). This ideology turns humans into machines and makes them the sum of inputs and outputs. A fascinating ideology with no connection to reality. The same ideology has not a clue about culture.

There is no such thing as ‘prevention’ for drops (https://www.dropsonline.org/resources-and-guidance/). Drops calculators, hazard hunts and any other product on the market promoted to ‘prevent drops’ are basically making the claim that fallibility can be prevented. I would imagine that this claim matches the ideology of zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/). All of this stuff that is marketed as ‘prevention’ is founded on the mythologies of Rationalism and Behaviourism.

None of this marketing has any connection to the realities of how humans make decisions (https://safetyrisk.net/how-we-make-decisions-about-risk/; https://safetyrisk.net/how-do-workers-make-decisions/).

Safety is NOT a choice you make! (https://safetyrisk.net/is-safety-a-choice-you-make/).

This is just behaviourist/rationalist language to assist blaming, shaming and naming.

So, if ‘safety is a choice you make’ is there any such thing as a ‘mistake’ in safety? (https://safetyrisk.net/demonising-error-and-mistakes-what-can-the-book-of-job-tell-safety/; https://safetyrisk.net/why-we-make-mistakes/). Language should make sense.

The language of ‘prevention’ is not what really happens when we tackle risk. Drops and mistakes cannot be ‘prevented’, they can only be minimized. At best, we can only speak of ‘minimization’ when it comes to mistakes and error. Zero is nonsense.

The real questions that are not being asked in these so called ‘prevention programs’ on sale is: how are humans viewed by this program? How is culture understood? What happens if a mistake is NOT prevented? If Risk Makes Sense (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/risk-makes-sense/), what happens when risk goes wrong?