Safety Needs to Stop Shouting

Safety has a habit of turning the volume up on everything.

Weather. Heights. Stockpiles. Forms. Procedures. Deviations. Near misses. Every bloody thing gets the same red box, the same serious voice and the same “this could kill someone” treatment.

Then something turns up that actually can.

And people barely flinch. In return we blame them and our old mate 'complacency'.

That’s the problem with constant catastrophe. If every warning is maximum volume, there is no maximum volume left. If everything is critical, nothing is.

Safety becomes background noise.

The bloke digging from the wrong part of a stockpile does not need more drama. He needs to know, very clearly, that this one can bury him.

That deserves the siren.

A missed form probably doesn’t.

Safety should help people tell the difference between annoying, important and genuinely dangerous.

When it doesn’t, it cries wolf.

And eventually the wolf turns up.