For Your Safety And Comfort

Whenever I hear an announcement or read a notice that starts "In the interests of security," or "For your comfort and safety" I brace myself for some inane rule or regulation that is either inconvenient or nonsensical or both. I feel sorry for it is the Health And Safety Executive (HSE), whose name is frequently taken in vain by various companies, bodies and individuals who cite health and safety rules as a reason for not doing something, or prohibiting ordinary members of the public from doing something when the so called health and safety rules they quote are figments of their imagination. The HSE have become so miffed by this that they actually have a section on their website dedicated to debunking the myths that surround their work (http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/).

Examples of health and safety incorrectly being quoted as a reason why something cannot be done include:

• Not serving chips in a paper cone.
• Free weights not being allowed in gyms.
• Universities banning mortar boards being thrown in the air by graduates.
• No mirror allowed in a toilet.

Chips in a cone, banned under "health and safety" rules!

Me (left), not throwing my mortar board but not due to health and safety.

Not allowing something on health and safety grounds is often due to ignorance or downright laziness on the part of the person seeking to ban whatever it is that one is trying to do. Of course there are legitimate health and safety reasons why some things should be discouraged. Removing trip hazards like trailing cables in the workplace, not blocking fire exits, providing adequate training for fire marshals, that sort of thing are all sensible, common sense health and safety precautions; not stocking plasters in a workplace first aid kit is not.

The blind adherence to rules, even when they make little sense is everywhere. A story much beloved of the newspapers is the one where a supermarket cashier refuses to allow the sale of alcohol to a person well over the age of 18, regardless of whether they have ID or not, because they have an underage person, say their son or daughter, with them. The sale is refused on the grounds that the adult may be buying the alcohol on behalf of the minor, an offense for which the cashier themselves may be prosecuted as an individual. So an adult may not buy alcohol because they have their child with them. What happens if that adult returns to the supermarket a few days later without their child and is served by the same cashier? Would that cashier refuse to sell them alcohol because by now they are on notice that this person has a child and therefore the alcohol they are buying may be passed to the child? The worrying thought is that at some time in the future some eagle eyed cashier with a good memory for their customers and their families may take it into their head to refuse, creating the possibility that in order to buy a bottle of wine, adults must sneak into an off license where no one knows they have a family or risk being prevented from buying alcoholic drinks until their children are eighteen. Take a rule to its logical extreme and we can see how ludicrous matters become without the application of a little common sense.

Pic: The Guardian

Health and safety prohibitions on ordinary, everyday, risk-free activities is one bugbear of mine; difficult to understand security restrictions are another. Everyone acknowledges on the anniversary of 9/11 and in the climate of potential terrorist activity, travellers should be protected at airports, or aeroplanes and on other modes of public transport but some restrictions carry no obvious value and merely inconvenience the innocent traveller. There is a limit on the amount of liquids that one can take onto a flight from the UK. Try and take more than 100 ml through security in a single container and you have a problem; 100 ml of an innocent liquid like water is prohibited, yet you get airside and can buy significantly more volume of the same liquid and take it on the plane without a problem. A couple of years ago I was at Stansted airport and the lady in front of me in the queue was becoming increasingly distressed because her medication, in a container larger than 100 ml, was in danger of being confiscated. The security personnel wanted to see her doctor's prescription before allowing her to travel with a fairly innocuous and inert substance, because as we know, rules are rules, there can be no exceptions and no matter how illogical, the rule must be applied. Yes, rules must be applied without the application of our old friend common sense. Sadly we see less and less of our old friend and his buddy, discretion, as the years pass.

Today we are a more risk averse society than we have ever been and I wonder what our world would have been like had some of the today's stringent safety requirements existed one hundred and fifty years ago. Would the United Kingdom's canal and rail networks have been built if the health and safety jobsworths have been in existence then? Would Brunel and Stephenson to name but two, have thrown in the towel having been wrapped up in so much red tape that their constructions never got beyond the drawing board? While the world is undoubtedly a dangerous place and certain jobs are more dangerous than others, a sense of perspective and proportion is required. Recently a story came to light of a group of local residents who collected litter in their community being told to stop as they had not received training in the use of "pickers." These residents, many of whom had been picking up litter for years, were told to cease and yes, the danger of discarded 'sharps' is an important consideration but one which can be dealt with quickly and without stopping an important local activity.

 

This device is so fiendishly difficult to use, specialised training is required.

I was moved to write this piece having just read an excellent book, In the Interests of Safety: The absurd rules that blight our lives and how we can change them by Tracey Brown and Michael Hanlon. It is a call for common sense in health and safety and our need to question the obstacles that are thrown in our path in the name of protecting us from ourselves when clearly we are quite capable of doing so without some pettifogging restriction, thank you very much.

I must repeat that am in favour of health and safety and of risk management, but it has to proportionate, effective, sensible and  realistic. Risk management and health and safety rules should be SMART[1] to which we can add that they should be reviewed in the light of further developments and amended accordingly otherwise we end up with rules and restrictions that are aimed to mitigate a risk that no longer exists and which achieve nothing other than annoying the life out of people. As I'm sure you know by now, rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men: nowhere in our lives are the fools outnumbering the wise men than in the field of health and safety.

Rant over.

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[1] SMART: Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic and Timebound.