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Originally Posted by SmartCat Aviation & industrial accidents have low casualties now only because of large-scale automation. If you give shovels to coal miners and ask them to dig up coal now, the casualties will go back up to previous levels - even if the safety processes are improved.
Ditto with road accidents & safety. Increase in automation & driver assistance is the only solution to fix the problem. Overall, the automobile industry is heading in the right direction - with increased adoption of ADAS/self-driving. |
That is more the means to an end. But it still requires the right attitude for those in power, and remarkably perhaps those on the ground so to speak.
It is a no-brainer that if you take the human out of the loop, you will not have any human-caused mistakes. So yes, automation, amongst other things has played a big role in aviation and other industries.
But even today, attitude is the biggest contributing factor in all these industries. A pilot with the wrong attitude, a welder with the wrong attitude, an oil rig worker with the wrong attitude, or a mine worker with the wrong attitude is going to get themselves and or co-workers killed.
We had a maritime accident here in the Netherlands about a year ago. A fast ferry boat and a fast water taxi collided. Multiple fatalities. Perfect weather. Both ships had all the electronic navigational equipment on board you could think of. Still, they collided because both skippers broke speed and collision prevention rules. That is an attitude problem, nothing else. You can increase fines, jail sentences, but as long as there are people out there who think the rules are not applicable to them, you are going to get fatalities due to them.
When you look into these programs in these various industries you will always find a combination of different aspects they had to address. From processes, training, tools, instructions etc. But the most important factor remains the attitude of everybody involved. If people don't agree on the goal of zero deaths you aren't going anywhere! In my offshore days, it was normal to have a few fatalities and horrendous accidents on our AHTs every year. It was just par for the course as they say. You had a dangerous job, it paid a lot. Maybe you got killed or a leg ripped off. Comes with the territory.
Let me illustrate with a few examples: One day as chief engineer on an AHT (Anchor Handling Tug) on the coast of West Africa we received a new safety instruction. Everybody working on the deck, whilst manoeuvring near or under the rig had to wear a hard hat. This was in the days that we worked the deck in shorts, rig boots and sunglasses. Nothing else. We almost had a mutiny on our hands. Everybody, including yours truly thought it was ridiculous. So we tore up the telex. Turns out, we could not ignore it. It had been mandated by the oil company that hired our AHT. We could not approach the oil rig until we complied. And our company got a very heavy fine. So from that moment on, everybody started wearing, grudgingly, hard hats. The subsequent years saw more safety measures introduced, and better equipment and everybody had to go through various training, just to be allowed on board.
When I worked in India, we took on a huge glass fibre rollout project across various (telecom circles) regions. I employed about 10.000 people digging trenches and putting fibre in. I was appalled at the total lack of even the most basic safety precautions out in the field. So we started a massive personal safety program. And as always we got a lot of pushback, not just from the various managers, but also from a lot of the workers in the field. They did not feel the need to wear safety shoes, they preferred to step into the trench on flip-flops!
We did try to improve the overall process, by introducing all kinds of machinery. We have been digging trenches all over the world. However, in certain parts of India, the then-available machines were simply not suitable for the terrain/environment. Those trenches had to be dug by hand. By a bunch of very gung-ho guys. Boy, could they swing a pick. But just like me in my younger days, they thought were invincible and felt they did not need any safety-related cuddling as they saw it.
I also got a lot of pushback from my Indian colleagues, who did not see the need and felt it would increase our cost. So from that moment onward, at every management meeting, I would show photographs of the accidents, show the images of dead colleagues, tell them who that individual was, something about his family and how he died or got disfigured. It did shut them up, but I don't think it changed their attitude perse. Luckily I was in a position where I could just push this through. The cost by the way for working safely was minute compared to all the other program costs.
Some of the responses on this thread remind me of myself 40 years ago and similar situations. Until people acknowledge that it is not normal to die on the job or the road. Or make excuses for it (it's only a small percentage) you are going to have a very tough time making any meaningful changes.
These days, all these various safety measures tend to be completely baked in many industries around the world. It never gets questioned in terms of relevance, but only in terms of how we improve any further. That is a big change of attitude! Going by some of the responses on this thread, I think India might still have a long way to go. As long as you are debating the statistics, people are still dying. And they will keep dying, until you start doing something.
When it comes to road safety, there is a huge gung-ho factor that needs to be addressed. Most male drivers feel they drive perfectly safe. Not only that, but they secretly believe they are at least as good if not better a driver as Max.
Gung-ho is a killer everywhere. Whether you fly a plane, drive a car, ride a bicycle or do some DIY on the roof of your house. And it is all between the ears, wrong attitude and a completely irrational self-esteem and self-assessment of one's capabilities and the situation at hand.
That is what gets people killed today, regardless of the level of automation (look at aviation accidents).
Jeroen