Paying The Price For Safety

Quite a few years back, we were evaluating the Dalian shipyard in China for a VLCC newbuilding project when we ran into the representative from DNV (Det Norske Veritas), a leading international provider of services for managing safeguarding of life, property and the environment. How's the worker attitude towards safety, we asked him. The Norwegian rolled his eyes, and suggested we give them another five years to catch up. This was before the world heard of baby food adulterated with melamine. Safety is so intertwined with quality of life and environment issues that the discipline is now covered by HSEQA (Health, Safety, Environment and Quality Assurance).

You would roll your eyes too as the Assistant Political Writer of the Sunday Times shared similar disdain for safe practices. If you believe him, it's perfectly acceptable to ignore the seat belt at the back of the taxi, use the smartphone while driving, or dash across the road instead of walking the couple of metres to a pedestrian crossing. Just because it's done here.

The moral malaise, we read, is already endemic in the National Service training grounds: "the army seems to revolve around breaking the rules".  And he wasn't talking about the President's son evading dangerous field exercises by seeking refuge in a laboratory. Motorbike riders without licences, safe distances for firing blanks ignored, sleeping under army trucks. Because the first rule of this fight club is "Just don't get caught".  Remember the Motor Transport Officer who was run over by a Land Rover (July 2009) and the Lance Corporal rear ended by a truck (January 2011)? The former apparently told everybody to step up on the curb, but he remained in harm's way, foolishly thinking his rank would protect him from being converted into road kill.

This cannot be true. Just because 18 year olds are being trained to be "shoot, maim and injure" doesn't mean life should be cheap.  Perhaps the writer was straining at straws to allay the weight of responsibility from the people in charge of the killing fields fast associated with our military training venues. This type of palliative will not endure. Even if only 39.9 percent has a healthy respect for safety for preservation of self and our loved ones, we can look forward to a better society than the current status quo.