There is little doubt that the triangle is ‘sacred’ to Safety. A search on Google for ‘safety triangle’ shows 297,000,000 results.

The best way to work out if something is ‘sacred’ to a group is to suggest to take it away. Then watch the response, the sense of dependence and the dissonance in wondering what could take its place. The same happens in rituals that are anchored to myths that are made sacred to a group.

Much of the power of belief operates because of ‘sunk cost’ anchored to identity. The deeper the identification with the ritual/myth the stronger the sense of sacredness tied to the object, practice or thing. The Cognitive Dissonance (https://safetyrisk.net/cognitive-dissonance-and-safety-beliefs/ ) experienced by the threat of breaking from a belief made sacred, is too much for some to bear.

All of this psychological/social investment in ritual/myth/sacred is unconscious, often from early indoctrination.

Once the investment has been made in a belief, it is often then too painful to question it or jettison it. Such is the need for certainty/security in the human condition.

The ‘safety triangle’ is deeply embedded in the mythology of safety (https://safetyculture.com/topics/workplace-safety/safety-triangle). There is no relationship or causality between injury rates and fatality. Yet, this is what is taught in orthodox safety texts worldwide and believed by many in the safety industry.

Much of this belief can be traced back to the work of Heinrich (1931) and Bird (1969).

It is no surprise to any scholar of mythology, history or religious studies that the safety industry, when it thinks about death and salvation, chooses the triangle as its choice of semiotic.

The triangle has a long history extending back thousands of years as a symbol of power/hierarchy in ritual/myth and belief. You can review this for yourself:

In religions, cultures and civilizations since the dawn of time, the triangle has been the symbol of life and death. The triangle serves as an Archetype for thinking about life and death and is shared in common across all cultures, civilizations, astrology, mythology, religion, cosmology, spirituality and paganism.

Understanding the nature of Archetypes and the nature of the Collective Unconscious is critical for understanding how geometry is made ‘sacred’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXDnFYu91vY).  Jung would suggest that the triangle itself is shared in the Collective Unconscious (https://www.jungiananalysts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/C.-G.-Jung-Collected-Works-Volume-9i_-The-Archetypes-of-the-Collective-Unconscious.pdf) as a symbol of hierarchical power (raising to heaven), birth (the yoni), life and death and the triarchic nature of life (mother/father/child; body/mind/spirit; past/present/future etc).

The evidence is clear, the triangle is common to all cultures, societies and civilizations as an unconscious expression of ritual/myth. Myths do not have to make sense or be rational and cannot be tackled with the methods of science, just as belief doesn’t require evidence. All myths are believed to be ‘semiotically true’ because they are verified semiotically. That is, the symbol/sign/icon takes on a life of its own in power through attribution, projection, assertion and correlation by faith. Without some studies in religion, semiotics, historiography, social psychology, anthropology, one is not likely to understand how this works.

This is why the worldview of safety/engineering would have little understanding of this blog. One of the reasons why safety is so religious is because it doesn’t have any of the equipment to critique itself eg. Transdisciplinarity, critical thinking, religious expertise etc. This is also why the ideology of zero has been able to take hold in the industry even though it is rationally absurd. Yet, the common slogans an call of Safety is: ‘Just Believe’ (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-for-true-believers/).

This is what happens with belief in the safety triangle. There is no evidence in the safety triangle to support its beliefs and there doesn’t need to be. The safety triangle is verified semiotically. All symbols carry the same power/force/energy in any belief system (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361989712_The_nature_of_beliefs_and_believing).

Belief in the Safety Triangle

Many symbols appeal to people in what they believe and this is how they ‘make sense’. The symbol itself carries an unconscious rationale of its own, hidden in its Archetype.

The same occurs in other symbols adopted in safety such as ‘swiss-cheese’ causality. There is no correlation between the ‘swiss-chesse’ semiotic and the way events occur but it is believed because the linear logic appeals to the industry. Events are rarely linear, life is random, being is not predictable and fallibility is reality.

Believing in the safety triangle provides a semiotic ‘solution’ and supposed method for belief.

What follows is the construction of a world (worldview) to fit the belief and then rituals/myths are anchored to it. Once cemented in a group and given political/symbolic/moral/religious power, they become nearly immovable. Once a belief is politicised in a group it is rarely questioned. Indeed, questioning religious/sacred beliefs is ‘sin’ in safety. Any critical thinking in safety is quickly labelled as ‘toxic’ or ‘anti-safety’.

This is the same dynamic that operates in religious groups when any sacred belief is criticised.

Belief in the Safety Triangle provides a logic of its own that appeals to Safety as an explanation of cause. It is attractive because it seems logical, ordered and cohesive. The last thing people want to live with in safety is: the reality that life is messy, paradoxical, ambiguous and unmanageable.

In this way, many of the symbols in safety are accepted by faith, not evidence.

Many of the beliefs of safety are then verified by the language of ‘safety science’ when there is nothing ‘scientific’ about such belief. The word ‘science’ (without open enquiry) is used as a marketing brand (as it was by Heinrich) in safety to validate a subjective position. The word ‘principle’ is used in a similar way when trying to validate a slogan (eg. in HOP).

Heinrich’s and Bird’s Triangles

Let’s have a look semiotically at where and when this began, the Heinrich triangle.

What is fascinating with the triangle itself is the use of lines to amplify the triangle telescopically, thus giving more power to triangle as a semiotic. Indeed, the use of lines and its triarchic separations give the symbol projected power to infinity (zero). In this way, the base to pinnacle is given dimensions that project into infinity. You see the same use of dimensions in the preliminary text to Star Wars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXDnFYu91vY) called ‘the crawling effect’. The crawling effect operates on the unconscious emotionally.

It is no wonder that the addiction to counting injury rates and the delusions of zero can be traced back to the concoction of this triangle. BTW, it doesn’t matter what text is aatched to the triangle or what rationalisations are attributed to it. The triangle acts semiotically and independently from text unconsciously, as it has throughout the millenia.

I would suggest that Heinrich had little idea that he was constructing such a semiotic and, this construct was unconscious. Heinrich was neither a semiotician, mythologist, studied in religions or psychology. Neither are many people who accept myth/ritual in their daily lives, such is adopted unconsciously.

Whether people are conscious of something as a ritual/myth/semiotic doesn’t alter the fact that the adoption of the triangle is a common religious object of sacred value. Similarly, Heinrich would not have been aware of the nature of his psychological judgments in his text but they are nonetheless there. The Historian knows how to evaluate and situate such discourse.

Bird who built his myth on Heinrich, certainly used none of these semiotic ‘effects’ of Heinrich indeed, he didn’t keep to the triarchic nature of Heinrich’s design.

Bird’s triangle is in four parts and each segment is joined. Indeed, by the time of Bird, the construct had become a pyramid and bears little similarity to the construct of Heinrich. Even so, the philosophy of attributed causation is similar but in Bird more greatly amplified in a sense of certainty and the myths of scientism.

Since Heinrich and Bird the safety Triangle has found its way into every sector of the safety industry. This is how Archetypes function. They take on a life of their own like all Archetypical myths/rituals and beliefs.

The Evolution of the Safety Triangle

The triangle offers the simplest structure of any geometric shape and is able to hold weight and distribute pressure evenly. It holds a sense of balance and harmony between triarchic energies/forces and appeals because it maintains a relationship of three. This has also been its attraction in pagan and religious cosmology and sacred geometry.

Since the work of Heinrich and Bird the safety triangle has been developed in many ways including as the Hierarchy of Control semiotic, as a hazard warning sign and various pyramid formations for safety. All are based on the assumption of hierarchies and appeal because power is distributed in hierarchical directions.

As the triangle has gained in semiotic power in the safety industry, so too has it gained in attributed sophistication, attribution and application. It has also been termed the ‘accident triangle’ and is used in psychological safety as a ‘drama triangle’ (https://www.mygrow.me/psychological-safety-and-drama-triangle/). Also the ‘transparency for safety triangle’ (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36231340/).

In SPoR

In SPoR, we also acknowledge the triarchic nature of the living/being in dialectic in the Workspace, Headspace and Groupspace (WS, HS, GS) (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-engagement/) and One Brain Three Minds (1B3M) (https://safetyrisk.net/one-brain-three-minds-and-perception/) method called iCue engagement (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-icue-a-visual-verbal-semiotic-method-for-tackling-risk/).

However, SPoR doesn’t use the triangle shape as a hierarchy in a traditional sense like safety. Instead, SPoR acknowledges triarchic-dialectic as an unresolvable moving dynamic of relationship NOT hierarchy.

In SPoR, the focus on the triarchic nature of life and being, acknowledges the way in which myth/ritual are embedded in all human enaction. Rather than deny the importance of myth/ritual, SPoR empowers them through their study and understanding. To do so, requires stepping away from the myths of science, engineering and positivistic paradigms of safety. This requires a Poetic and semiotic worldview in order to better engage persons ethically in the process of tackling risk.

If you wish to understand SPoR methods and how these use triarchic thinking to improve safety, then you can write here for coaching or to undertake studies: admin@spor.com.au