blame the worker
cmonforton | December 21, 2016The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) deserves credit for rapidly publicizing information about serious injury incidents and close call events. A brief recap and single photo make an easy lesson for a pre-shift safety meeting or toolbox talk. But MSHA needs to reject language in its safety alerts that blames workers for their injuries. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it's not effective for injury prevention.
This morning, an MSHA "Serious Incident Alert" landed in my inbox. The lead sentences read:
"A miner was trying to determine why clay was not flowing properly by examining…
cmonforton | May 19, 2016I heard the headline from CBS News on my car radio:
“NTSB to cite operator error in deadly Amtrak derailment.”
The news story came on the eve of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) public hearing regarding the May 2015 disaster outside of Philadelphia. The derailment killed eight passengers and injured 200 others. The subsequent news stories repeated "operator error." The phrase makes it sound like the engineer hit the wrong switch or pushed the wrong button. I wondered whether "operator error" in the headlines was a repulsive example of click baiting.
It wasn't.
The NTSB’s…