Sadly I cannot speak of any real value of such statistics having experienced these in widespread use in the middle east where huge signs would pronounce to the world that there had been X million man hours since the last recorded or reported injury or incident. My experience of this is that it introduced a parallel line. As someone has already said who on earth would want to be the one to reset that gargantuan figure back to zero. Oh the guilt ! Thus no one would report anything for fear of being “that one” It’s not as if its of any real value as its past and cannot be changed, it just puts the fear of god up everyone. Its not what safety is about and certainly not influencing engagement or positive behavioural changes. The only real “evidence” I had of that would be not seeing someone in work and asking their workmates where so and so was and the reply was they were off sick or seeing a worker hobbling and saying an old injury or some such thing. Of course difficult to prove either way but on some of the sites I worked where the number of site workers are many thousands remember to err is human the balance of probabilities didn’t stack up.

Allan St John Holt who authored the book Principles of Health & Safety at Work (in the UK) which was a must for NEBOSH students back in the day, I still, believe it or not, still use this on occasion.. Also Paul H O'Neill, former boss of Alcoa in the US and The Power of Habit book by Charles Duhigg (google him) both Allan and Paul sadly now passed on. They simplified things to a point that keeping things simple and relevant is often the best and the war and peace volumes may actually be masking something. Both had a profound effect early in my career.

My experiences thus far it seems that smaller companies find benefits in the merged roles to keep things efficient and real but in larger organisations I would suggest it should be a separate role as there can be conflicts of interest. Yes parts do overlap like ACC claims but in other instances things might pay to be kept separate. Reporting through to an HR manager can often dilute the message as well whereas a direct or dotted line to the most senior person in the organisation may yield a quicker more efficient response and not involve any potential for dilution from opinions. I have experienced conflicts in my past where the merged roles existed overseas and it was not productive. H & S is not HR and HR is not H & S....collaborate yes but keep it separate. My two penneth..

I think the "star" for me was Liam Malone, keynote speaker at the end of the second day. His talk was littered with his own life's obstacles yet he dared to disrupt and despite those obvious obstacles he beat them all down, he succeeded and won. He also delivered his talk in a very user friendly engaging manner and made it enjoyable and inspirational to listen to. The suicides in construction was a shocker and eye opener as well. Enjoyed this conference.

Despite "edukashun" being afforded to almost everyone its odd that in todays age there is still a huge misunderstanding of the term "Elf un Safety" and how it is hijacked for things nothing to do with it as in Paula's example. A tad sad but also quite entertaining when reading them :-)

Unfortunately, it does still occur where an injured person is "rushed" back to work for a number of reasons...ACC stats, LTI's stats etc., More often than not a person that is truly injured and returned to work sooner to alleviate stats or financial burdens often ends up going off again. I even once heard of a certain company who would drive to an injured persons house pick him up and drive him back to their site to watch company videos and then drive him back to state that he was not an LTI. Those sorts of companies seemingly thriving on lagging indicators as a measure of their "success" Wow they had 50 million man hours without an LTI kinda thing...it really isn't the way to conduct their business but some peers still adore those glorious stats...if I see higher reporting across the board I tend to view this as a positive culture particularly if they are mainly hazards/risks observed and ensuing actions involving a positive engagement with the workers...my two penneth...

Alan, I believe 14 cases with ACC is correct. They are also looking at overseas experiences with regard to injuries/fatalities which isn't a bad thing to do as its a common risk. I think Adam has hit on something and that seems to be the lack of information surrounding their use as we wouldn't want to knee-jerk legislation or bye-laws off the cuff so an analysis/report might be a good proposition so that we can determine a suitable set of guidelines or codes much the same as other modes. As it stands at the moment though it is a HiPo that something will occur OTBOP.

UPDATE today 25/10: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12148471
Now that a councillor was nearly clipped "within an inch" there will be an urgent safety review of the scooters. Not sure why only after a councillor was clipped but there you go....

Interesting that our very concerns are also those of others according to some news articles of near misses and actual injuries from using e-scooters. A friend of mine just said why can helmets be plugged into the scooters so that when a person wants one they have to disengage the helmet to activate and use the scooter otherwise it will not operate. Perhaps that may encourage riders to use a helmet. Reading some of the comments on other news outlets overseas indicate of class action lawsuits against Lime for its lack of safety so this is something that is going to drag on until such times and injuries dictate otherwise....other countries and cities have banned them as a result of serious injury and fatalities...headphones being used while riding one on the road is a real worry for me !

This raises concerns I agree, only this morning on Queen St I saw some of these Lime-S electric scooters on the road not the pavements being ridden by people wearing headphones and running through red lights so a high potential to be struck by a vehicle going through a green light and not being able to hear any traffic or sirens. I'm guessing it'll only be a matter of time before someone on a scooter is hit. I notice as well although it may be unrelated but I see keep left painted on the pavements....what are the actual rules around their use ? I understand Segways are not supposed to be used on the pavements...but I'm not sure about that.

Hi Sonya,
There's a plethora of safety clips out there. Weeding them out is a mammoth task but as previously said Worksafe has some, also the HSE (UK) has some as well worthy of consideration. I use a number of favourites one of which is the Weatherford RADAR video made by a site team but have used many that I have collected over the years, recognising the authors of course. Youtube has loads that can be saved to your computer as people like to make them freely available (some don't of course). I've been about positive engagement for donkeys years before it was a cool saying as its the guys out there that matter and can make the difference, not me so over the years I've tended to use short clips to keep it snappy and relevant. I might have to find a depository for all the videos I've amassed !

This article from Chapman Tripp offers a slightly different angle on this very case: https://www.chapmantripp.com/publications/sound-health-and-safety-guidance-from-pioneer-case
I believe this case will also come up at the LegalSafe Conference next week....it certainly invokes some very deep thinking

I love old photos like this. I wonder if the stats for the day were reflective of what was happening and true ? It was a different time and place so it would be easy to criticise, we can only learn from them and move on. Great photos of the time, thanks for sharing Peter.

I found this link from an outfit in Rochester UK that may be addressing this with a "safety turban" link here: http://angelpages.biz/4theturbanator It seems to talk about motorbike safety turbans so possibly may be looking at safety turbans for construction sites ?

Ian, from memory (years ago) the UK went through this and I had it in my mind that a hardhat manufacturer did come up with a hardhat element within the turban itself allowing religious beliefs to be maintained and still offer suitable protection for the head but I can't seem to find it....since then though there has been much on the matter (over there) of no longer requiring hardhats (Case 149 - HSE: http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/myth-busting/2013/case149-hard-hats.htm and also backed up for Inspectors here: http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/internalops/og/og-00003.htm Naturally, we are not in the UK but we still utilise much data from there here...

In my working life in safety (30 odd years ahem...) PPE was and is always the last resort but I agree many default to PPE. I can remember the HSE's old 5 steps to risk assessment which is similar to what we now have and its always been the last resort. Affect changes around the task/item etc., before saying load the person up. Hazardous substances though will always entail PPE as part of the controls. I remember using HF acid and we had extraction booths with forced ventilation, and every conceivable engineering design for the booth but we still expected the employee to don a high level of PPE before using the booth so we had a number of gates offering protection to ensure it would be an extremely rare occurrence for the person to get any HF on their skin. Additionally, we had the antidote cream to hand should that rare occurrence ever happened.

From memory, the UK now has a supplier of a hard hat version of a turban that permits the turban wearer to continue with his beliefs and work with approved PPE. As stated above there is some protection afforded to religious beliefs and some industries factor out work that might require a hard hat in the absence of an approved turban hard hat. Risk assessments used to identify the necessary controls and potential solutions

You'll find no disagreement from me folks, I couldn't believe the story at first until I read the article and checked the date ! It is simply utter madness. I was hoping to read that Worksafe would have made more of their response but it seems not....

Peter, I'm inclined to agree. There are seemingly many barriers that appear when its not really that difficult. Yes gender should be irrelevant but as its evolved from history where men were in charge as it were there lies the resistance I guess. Her prognosis is mental stress basically and is of interest to us practitioners as I've known both males and females abandon their careers because of it in their workplaces. We all know of far more serious solutions that people have taken in despair. A few years ago a female professional on LinkedIn found herself the subject of very inappropriate comments from males based solely upon her profile picture which was naturally extremely distressing for the lady and undermined what she was attempting to achieve on a professional level. I have a daughter much like many others and I say to her as she's only young that her gender is of no concern and that she can achieve whatever she wants to set her mind to but to know that she will no doubt encounter gender bias because she's female and often a woman will have to work twice as hard as an equivalent male just to achieve the same end result. Its not what I should be saying to her but I need her to be aware that that is the hard reality even today. Both genders can work hard and play hard should they desire but not to the detriment of any other person, that's not to say I encourage alcohol in the workplace as this always leads to all manner of issues but its really not that difficult to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself and that is with respect and courtesy. A large amount of this indifference is borne out of the playground as children during those formative years I'm inclined to think....talent, merit, skill, ability are not dependent upon any bias.....and should be equally rewarded without bias and with equality. Arguably, the same exists when we practitioners attempt to change some aspect of safety....there appears the barriers, barriers against an existing culture which is why I feel behavioural safety and psychology to be a significant aspect of our work today. The word culture is often misused and abused disguising an unjustified resistance...I can only imagine what Maggie Thatcher would have gone through becoming a female Prime Minister in the late 1970's in the UK in charge of the hallowed halls of Whitehall and seats of government that most likely scoffed at first....my two penneth...

Many companies here seemingly rely on these figures and it really doesn't indicate how safe a company is, it merely indicates common reporting and those figures are or can be manipulated. I'm with Peter on this as its a rear view mirror and not that useful. I've come across organisations that have 'buried' incidents/events in order to gloss over a stat thus creating a parallel reporting structure.. I prefer transparency and clarity. Even investigations can become "learning groups" to move forward with.....