Although the variable may be a factor in the cause of the incident, controlling variables will rarely be a functional solution to preventing accidents. When an unexpected accident occurs while performing a regular task, people will often blame the variables: perhaps they were more tired that day, or maybe something was different about the environment. The Difficulty with Encouraging Safety with Low-Probability Risks When businesses build their processes around common sense and experience, this results in the perpetuation of low-probability incidents. While this is an effective way of dealing with more high probability risks, the innate lack of experience we have with handling the results of low probability risks means that common sense and experience are not nearly as effective tools. In the workplace, many people use experience and common sense to deal with potentially risky situations. However, they still need to follow all safety precautions as the danger is still present. If a worker routinely works around heavy machinery, they may become “numb” to the risks as they rarely result in an injury. The more times an action is performed, the more likely something will happen, even if the probability is low. ![]() However, because many of our actions in the workplace are performed over and over again, mitigating this risk becomes more important. Many behaviours in the workplace can be viewed as “safe” when they are actually low-probability risks. When an event is viewed as unlikely, it can be easy to shrug off risk. Low probability events create difficult decision making processes for people.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |