Who does learn from accident with others?


It is age-old saying that learning from others mistakes and doing own course correction is a million dollars wisdom. However, this does not seem fits to safety fields. The reason, the accident we hear about or witness it happening at home, at workplace, at roads or anywhere else leaves us prudent for time being only.  The scene of accident remains very short-lived in our memory and very soon we started committing similar mistakes or accepting someone under our influence doing same. 
I would like to mention a real case. It is case of a factory, where I had started my career in Safety section as Safety Officer. As my routine responsibility, I used to capture unsafe condition and unsafe act and put them into PPT for presentation in meeting at some next occasion. As any SO does, I used to show also non compliance in wearing helmet by a few workers and management people as well at work site. The Head of mechanical department had habit of not using helmet on regular basis while taking round in the plant. I had shown many video clippings to give the point of wearing helmet a focus but of no avail to the habit of HOD. Two months back, he himself had reported an accident in which a worker had sustained head injury from debris falling off conveyor belt. Nevertheless, HOD did not learn from the accident and his habit remained unchanged. One fine morning, he went to the site where some maintenance work on conveyor system was in progress. While he was talking to one site engineer just under the over-head conveyor, a D-wrench slipped from the hands of the fitter and hit directly to the bare head of the HOD. He was shifted immediately to a hospital where he remained in-door for 2 weeks for the treatment of deep cut wound and survived a fatality as Doctor conveyed. From that day onward, his behavior got changed and he was never seen without helmet in the plant. Going a step further, he vowed to ensure that everybody in his section wear helmet without fails.  
Now conclusion to the case, should we learn a lesson this way? Should he not learn from the injury of his department’s employee or from similar unfortunate accident elsewhere? It is to mind that, it was a matter of chance that he survived the accident to share his learning but is every person so lucky? Therefore, every one of us needs to have reasonable perception of the risk and do our best to take appropriate protection in due course of our activity as per demand of the prevailing danger (risk). We must pay heed to the advice of Safety Officers/Practitioners or to information received from newspaper, TV or any other source that teaches us about safety.  So let’s not be in a situation that makes us learn from accident of self. 

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