Skip to main content

Your Phone is Safe...It's You I'm Worried About!

Long before mobile phones came along people still found ways to make things turn out the way they weren't supposed to. No doubts.

Work could still be hazardous or downright perilous provided the right triggers were present. People ate, drank, smoked behind the wheel. Why some even tried reading the morning or evening paper in slow-moving traffic, while not a few lady drivers made a habit of a little powder application every now and again. What with having to beat the rush hour traffic - no time enough at home, so the in the car it is. Well some got away with it but many didn't.

That means many got involved in vehicle collisions that could have been avoided or prevented. Which meant spending time and money unforeseen, unplanned. Time too, not to mention the rest of it like anger, frustration, etc. But in the end it wasn't 'too bad' because we could generally  'live' with the outcome or so we quietly mused.

Then came along this cute invention called mobile phone. What a marvel! No wires trailing you, can fit in your pocket, purse or wallet, light as a 'feather', plus can do a lot of things like take photos, video/audio recording, send/receive all manner of data, messages, etc. Wonderful. Hey, convenient for use anywhere too including the car, driver or passenger, does it matter? Guess what? It's fashionable too. Love it, love it, love it. Life is good. Really good, huh!

Excepting that now work has become more hazardous and a lot more downright perilous because drivers not only do all those UNSAFE things they previously did when life was a little less faster, they can now make phone calls, send/read texts, listen to music on iPods or whatever while zipping down the road, street or highway. But they still must safely negotiate bends, navigate traffic lights safely, obey all signs and recognize that they share the road with other road users! Lots of responsibility won't you say?

Yes indeed, lots. Any wonder why accident numbers have climbed astronomically? Any wonder why more people are being killed on the road when drivers are doing a lot more than driving everyday? Any wonder why some now refer to mobile phones as WMDs....Weapons of Mass Distraction? Any wonder therefore why some are saying: Your Phone Is Safe....It's You They're Worried About?

Any wonder.....?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THAT 5-MINUTE PEP TALK BEFORE THE JOB

There are pep talks and there are pep talks. Over the years, I've had the privilege of observing pep talks all day long on seismic crews, construction sites, production platforms, processing plants, wire line, drilling operations, rig moves and so on. But not once have I left not feeling maybe the crew could have done better with the shape and content of the core messages thereof. This is because I am of the view that safety messages are only helpful if they are clear and to the point, with little or no ambiguity, if any at all. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Now 5-minutes is not a great deal of time for even the most gifted and skillful of speakers to nail  home  the key safety dos and don'ts of the job soon to commence. So most of these talks frequently average out to be sing songs and prayerful affairs in the end, with generalized 'messages' like be 'your brother's keeper', 'safety is everybody's business', 'you all know

HOW MUCH DOES A NEAR MISS INCIDENT COST?

In 'ACCIDENT IS MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN', we tried illustrating  how a NOTHING HAPPENED near miss incident of a hammer accidentally slipping off a technician's grasp, falling through a considerable height and landing safely between two busy foremen, with no damage to property or injury to anyone on site resulted in so much useful production time loss. A conservative computation of the time-cost estimate showed what seemed to be a 'harmless' incident costing the site company management a hefty 3.4 Man-Days lost time in direct costs! The exercise ended without considering the 'POTENTIAL' of the occurrence. 'POTENTIAL' simply refers to the probability of a much more consequential outcome by chance or slightly altered circumstances given the number of people exposed to the threat at the time. This is usually what constitutes the difference between a 'NOTHING HAPPENED' incident, a disabling/ serious property damage one or a fatality . That th

How Much of Your Opex Do You Save Cutting Corners?

What % of your operating budget do you save when you look the other way while unauthorized changes and deviations are a norm in the workplace under your supervision? Would you 5, 10, 15 or maybe 30%? You are not too sure how much, if anything at all? Well, it is highly unlikely that you will ever save on your Opex if employees are free to make up their own rules as they go along or can decide which step on the job comes next instead of what the approved procedures say. In fact working with scant regards for the Right Way of doing things condemns you to an ever spiraling  operating budget spend. Because you'll find that you are constantly grappling with 'digging a hole to fill a hole' throughout the life of  the project. In the end, there are no prizes for guessing that your project will come in grossly over budget and way outside the delivery schedule because of all the issues of rework, unplanned stoppages, delayed logistics, repairs and replacements, backtracking, c