Accident Report

[Music] portrait of three people whose accidents didn't have to happen pete o'connor knew how to lift those male sacks shirley jensen wrote the company manual on slips and falls and on the last hurried day of his life dan craft knew the crucial importance of safety when working on hazardous electrical equipment but everything changed on that final day not for lack of knowledge experience or skill but because of some ways they thought and felt as one accident report said later it was almost as if all three had been sabotaged by their own brains [Music] to the scientists studying me i'm the fantastically complicated three pound gray and white organ within your skull the wrinkled jelly-like mass you call your brain i am on all accounts your most prized possession and by far your most complicated for here within my 12 billion cells is the source for all your thought behavior memory knowledge emotions and attitudes the most basic and vital of which provide you with the proper responses to the daily dangers you face dangerous machinery i show you how to use it safely hazardous materials i tell you how to handle them flying debris i help you know how to protect yourself objects light or heavy i program you to lift and carry them safely dangerous surfaces i'm the source of your ability to avoid slips and falls hazardous conditions i alert you to the dangers and program you to react with care within and throughout the whole range of hazardous situations i provide you with intelligent responses reinforced by your basic desire for self-preservation and your unique ability to imagine the possible consequences of unsafe acts [Music] and so i provide you with the wisdom to perceive danger and the knowledge and skill to perform tasks safely but ironically it is not enough to know we've been taught the right way to lift things i mean i knew better than to lift up that sack the way i did i knew it wasn't smart to run downstairs without holding the handrail or anything so why did shirley jensen fracture her hip i was in a hurry to get the job done you see it it was friday and i i wanted to get away early and why did pete o'connor rupture a lumbar disc i don't know it was easier that way and i thought i could get away with it it was easy in a hurry listen to some reasons so often reported for injury i just didn't think it would happen to me i was in a hurry that day and i guess i was just careless i'd always done it that way before and never got hurt i just wasn't watching what i was doing i guess i just thought taking a shortcut would be easier that's all shortcuts the easy way it happens all the time but the easy way is too often the dangerous way and shortcuts can make deep and painful cuts if they happen around cutting edges and the payoff is seen in emergency rooms all over the country the cold hard fact of the matter is that most accidents on or off the job happen to people who know how to work safely so why do so many people kill and injure themselves every year well let me tell you just a bit more about myself as so many know i am extremely sensitive to the chemical influences from all kinds of drugs and just one drop of alcohol in a thousand drops of blood is quite enough to blur and distort what i think here and see but i am sensitive to to feelings emotions and attitudes which can also distort the way you think hear and see angry indifferent impatient bored sleepy stressed upset hung over perhaps coupled with attitudes like it won't happen to me it's not my problem shortcuts save time this job is dull the boss has it in for me singly or in combination they can cut through my cortical layers like a sharp knife releasing the risk-taking attitudes which bounce between my billions of cells with the familiar words you know so well who needs a ladder a chair is good enough let it ring it's not my phone hey it's not my problem if the floor is slippery picking stuff up off the floor isn't part of my job description or in the case of dan craft see you tomorrow jerry i'll see you later dan hey dan hold it up a minute will you please yeah what's up oh the circuit to the machine shop is shorting out or something the breaker's overheating and i want you to take care of it for me come on al i was just ready to take off you said i could leave early today remember yeah but you have to check the circuit first can't afford to have something blow and shut the shop down can't you have gym or charlie do it i really got to get out of here i'm sorry dan you're the only guy i've got it shouldn't take long yeah i know nothing should take long but everything does huh this is going to be the fastest check job you ever saw count down to tragedy and the clock is ticking you see the vast majority of injury accidents are created by people not things tripping hazards don't reach up and grab your feet machines don't reach out and bite hand tools don't slice and jab your flesh by themselves file drawers don't lie and wait to hurt you without help stairways don't snatch their steps out from under you and lifted objects don't conspire to strain your back no while it grieves me to say it accidents originate right here among my 12 billion cells made easy by the attitudes which color the way so many think and feel it won't happen to me we've always done it this way it's not my problem i haven't had an accident in 20 years unfortunately it is one of my tendencies to justify and reinforce dangerous attitudes and acts like that whenever you get away with them though like russian roulette the chances for catastrophic consequences increase with the frequency of play and a very great many who will be injured today are the very same people who got away with it yesterday so what's to do well for starters consider the consequences of shortcuts and dangerous behavior risk of snatching up a heavy load like that or that right the consequences could involve a ruptured disc and some mighty serious surgery yet back injuries from improper lifting and carrying still account for more time lost but any other on or off job cause see what happened to me was all those male sacks looked pretty much alike and i kind of got in the habit of grabbing them off the dolly and tossing them in the truck without testing them for weight or anything now i know that's not the right way to do it but it saves time and well this one day i grabbed a really heavy sack and i've been laid up ever since risk of running downstairs like that absolutely you could slip trip or fall and the consequences could be and have been everything from a broken nose to a broken neck still slips and falls hospitalized hundreds of thousands of people a year who just didn't consider the consequences on this one friday i had to leave a few minutes early and just when i was ready to go my boss said she had to have a report that was in an office downstairs the elevators in our building are really slow so i took the stairs well like i said i was in a hurry so i was running and i sure took a nasty fall but there's still another reason to consider the consequences because you see it's one of my characteristics that while i may receive inputs from your ears nose eyes and other sense organs i don't always allow you to recognize the possible risks they perceive so while you may see the slippery floor the open drawer the flammable rags the overloaded circuit the cluttered ground the forgotten tool the unused seat belt such things often fail to signal danger and the result can be as dangerous as a lighted match in a gas tank so use your brain be alert force me not just to see but to make you act so make it click pick it up close it clean it because a hazard recognized is an accident prevented finally remember things change just because you used your office chair as a ladder last week and got away with it this time it may roll out from under you just because you lifted things like that a hundred times before and got away with it you may not this time and just because you didn't need your seat belt yesterday it may save your life today and last of all remember people change by the year day hour and minute as they run through the spectrum of feelings emotions and attitudes some of which may be hazardous to your help mad at the world today careful anxious about home problems careful bored with doing the same old thing careful mad at the boss careful upset and in a hurry like dan craft [Music] careful mike mike do you have any safety locks with you i forgot mine i need to lock off this circuit breaker while i work on the switch to the machine shop by the loading dock not with me uh you get him in the store room though no i don't have time you're gonna be here for a while no i'm through now ah great well i'll even know it i guess i'm only going to be working there a few minutes that's good uh you can be cutting the power off to the machine shop and you know how those guys are i'm just as much a hurry as they are see you later yeah see you tomorrow and so dan kraft an experienced and skillful worker takes the shortcut he thought would save him five minutes and will cost in his life and so i'm concerned because while people use my highest capabilities and best functions to collect safety knowledge and skills they so often bypass ignore overrule and replace them with their simplest and most self-destructive emotions and attitudes and the tragic result is that i become the cause of accidents not their cure remember i said things change well in the case of dan craft a passing forklift blew away his note and 90 seconds later someone from the machine shop seeing the open and unlocked circuit breaker decided to close it portrait of an accident that should never have happened and accidents don't happen to the vast majority of you who do consider the consequences of unsafe behavior by lifting correctly using stairs properly and by safely performing thousands of other tasks both on and off the job for you safety attitudes are the keystone to accident prevention because you know so well that no job is so important and no service so urgent that time and thought cannot be taken to perform the job safely as the source of all your wisdom i ought to know so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you