The Wardman Wire

Most accidents happen in the home.  RoSPA keeps an online database based on figures from A&E departments.  It makes depressing reading.

In 2002 in the UK 3034 people had an accident at home that required A&E treatment, involving a bin liner or waste bag.  Blister packs claimed 882 victims and a further 431 unfortunate souls were apparently attacked by their sunglasses.   None of these are what I would have considered to be particularly dangerous items, so what exactly were these hapless individuals doing that resulted in an injury serious enough to go to casualty?

How doyou have an accident with sunglasses that is serious enough to require hospital treatment?  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who can tell me.

So clearly some of our fellow countrymen need protecting from themselves.  Anyone who can have a serious accident with a blister pack needs a bit of wrapping in cotton wool wouldn’t you say?  Suddenly some of those bonkers stories don’t sound quite so bonkers after all.

Here’s a few work-related horror stories from my own experience:

A cleaner using a toilet descaler thought she’d give it a bit more cleaning power by mixing it with another cleaning chemical, despite clear warnings on both bottles and during her training.  Yes it was bleach and acid and the result was chlorine gas.  Not exactly what she’d reckoned on.

An operator who uses an oven where it’s necessary to wear gloves for protection against hot metal was pointing out a problem with the oven to a colleague.  He’d taken his gloves off to do this, touched the hot metal and burned his fingers.

A contractor using a ladder had been provided with a safety device which sits at the foot of the ladder and stops it slipping.  Easy as anything to use but he couldn’t be bothered to move it when he moved the ladder, so up he went with no support for the base of the ladder.  Oily floor, tall ladder, predictable result.  Ladder slips, contractor fractures three vertebrae and is rushed to hospital.  He was lucky – not paralysed this time.

In every one of these cases the prevention was simple and obvious.  In every case the injured party went against their training, against known work practice and, let’s be honest here, against simple common sense.  I’d be prepared to bet that the same could be said of many of the home accidents in the RoSPA database.

So next time you hear about “over the top” safety precautions, ask yourself if in a country where over 3000 people in 12 months got attacked by bin bags it might just be time to start taking responsibility for our own bonkers actions before we become a nation incapable of common sense judgement.