I don’t think I have ever witnessed an industry so consumed with itself, so divided and misguided than safety. We see this all the time with efforts to make safety relevant to the lives of people seeking support in tackling risk.

Every other month there is some fad like: heroes, Hazardman, gimps for safety, mum’s for safety, AI for safety, safety heaven, Indian Jones for Safety, safety pickles, meerkats for safety, dumb ways to die, brain blobs and fur balls for safety, 1% safer and Sensei safety and much more. This list and agonising diversion from safety is what Safety does best. It never seems to be about the basics of helping to tackle risk. It’s about fads, gimmicks, myths and trends because safety has no idea what to do about risk. So, it follows slogans that are not principles, that provide no method and calls to innovation that offer no innovation. All of this is just remarketed traditional safety, branded as innovation but it’s just put in the wash, rinse and re-cycle.

The latest I saw was this one, Safety as Animals (see Figure 1. Safety as Animals).

It seems that safety culture is so desperate to be relevant that it can only concoct up slogans,  and gimmicks, because it doesn’t know what to do.

Of course, when you make up this stuff it is simply a reaffirmation of all Safety knows: safety is a choice you make, all accidents are preventable, zero harm and blame fixes nothing all disguised in a silly meme or gimmick (https://safetyrisk.net/identity-regulation-and-risk-its-not-just-worksafe-nz/).

None of this ever tackles the challenges of ethical leadership, why certain models of safety don’t work, the basics of effective conversation, skills in critical thinking or a host of issues that could make safety relevant to people.

Figure 1. Safety as Animals

The message behind this latest collection of memes is, wake up to yourself, fallibility is the problem, Safety knows best, un-safety comes from being lazy, complacency and build capacity (a favourite SD slogan).

Why do we need a bunch of animal projections to carry a message of safety in the first place? When we know, in the animal kingdom its survival of the fittest and the weak get eaten. You are never safe when a wolf or tiger is about.

Using the animal kingdom like this is typical of safety culture. No message of helping, care, learning or ethical practice. These are the last thing safety wants to talk about yet, these are the foundation of being professional. Safety loves to claim the word ‘professional’ but hasn’t a clue about acting professionally.

It seems safety would rather have a gimmick than substance. It would rather have slogans that methods and, speak nonsense to people rather than work on skill development (https://safetyrisk.net/of-course-the-model-matters/) in tackling risk.

If on the other hand, you want to explore methods that work (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/) and develop skills in tackling risk, you can email for more (admin@spor.com.au) or you are welcome to come to the convention in Canberra in September: https://safetyrisk.net/spor-convention-15-19-september-2025/