"Health and safety gone mad" - truth or tabloid guff?
Discussion
coppice said:
It is easy to snipe at H and S but in my experience little , if any , is to do with the law per se but far too often is simply attributable to over zealous (and often not very bright ) individuals who take perverse pleasure in dreaming up daft protocols and procedures for the simplest of activities.
I agree. When people hear H&S used as an excuse for seemingly strange decisions it is rarely directly down to the HSE or any specific legislation. It is far more likely to be down to a workplace risk assessment carried out by someone who does not fully understand risk. I have seen many of these risk assessments which seem to have been written with the mindset that if the author can think of a possible accident then they must implement some sort of control measure, even if it may not seem sensible to those affected.Edited by jkh112 on Sunday 29th November 22:05
My usual answer to hi-viz is if you don't look it doesn't matter what they are wearing you aint going to see them.At one place I delivered to we had to go through a security scanner and was always having to prove that my boots were safety boots because they didn't set the alarms off.I had to demonstrate more than once that they had toe cap protection. Try explaining what Kevlar is to somebody who has never heard of it and barely speaks english .
When I was involved with motorsport marshalling we had one or two clashes with elf n safety 'experts' over the years .
Ear defenders was the usual one ,how can you hear a out of control car with a dead engine ?the change of engine tone that is usually the warning of an impending drama ?
Ear defenders was the usual one ,how can you hear a out of control car with a dead engine ?the change of engine tone that is usually the warning of an impending drama ?
Kawasicki said:
Having spent a few years living in UK & Australia, I recently moved to Germany.
It's terrifying. The only mention of health and safety in my company was the justification for why people are allowed to drink beer at work. Other than that, nothing.
It is really, really excellent.
The Autobahn is the icing on the cake.
With work I went to the LUK factory in Germany, where we witnessed women working on the production floor in sandals. We were all taken a back by this, but we were told in Germany they told people what was dangerous and what they should wear. If they chose not to and got hurt they got nothing. It's terrifying. The only mention of health and safety in my company was the justification for why people are allowed to drink beer at work. Other than that, nothing.
It is really, really excellent.
The Autobahn is the icing on the cake.
He went on to explain at their factory in Sheffield they had to enforce all the gear and surprisingly they had more accidents there than in Germany. The conclusion they had come to was we had somehow lost the ability to see danger in the UK without it being labelled, so perversely if they were not told it was dangerous, they assumed it was safe and got hurt
egor110 said:
I work for a delivery company where none of the drivers are allowed to change tyres if there's a puncture.
Instead they have to phone the rac and wait.
This is because most people have no idea how to change a wheel correctly. Instead they have to phone the rac and wait.
Vans and trucks will often need the wheel nuts re torquing after a certain amount of time or mileage or both and delivery drivers will want to get to the end of delivery journeys.
Wheel torquing then gets forgotten and wheels then fall off.
It happens quite a lot surprisingly and nearly always because retorques haven't been carried out correctly due to the re torque labels given to the driver by the tyre fitter being ignored by drivers. Mercedes sprinters and the VW crafter version of the same van will often try to shed a newly fitted wheel if it's not retorqued properly!
Butter Face said:
When we move cars at work now we have to do it in pairs with a 'Marshall' watching and the other driving, hazard lights on and a 5mph speed limit.
Our garage has been open for 20 years and nobody has ever been hit by a car!
Give it another 5 years and all cars will have a beeper and an audible "Warning, vehicle is reversing"Our garage has been open for 20 years and nobody has ever been hit by a car!
Asked in large chain pub who shares the same initials as Jack Daniels for some hot water to heat up a baby bottle...Was told I couldn't carry it across the pub due to health and safety. Not entirely sure what they do when someone buys a coffee...
Rarely is it health and safety, more likely company policy
Rarely is it health and safety, more likely company policy
grumpy52 said:
When I was involved with motorsport marshalling we had one or two clashes with elf n safety 'experts' over the years .
Ear defenders was the usual one ,how can you hear a out of control car with a dead engine ?the change of engine tone that is usually the warning of an impending drama ?
I wish somebody had made me wear them in the 70s when I marshalled-everything was unsilenced and standing over a DFV or Chevy smallblock in hillclimb cars did nothing for my hearing. Lost most of what was left of the hearing in one ear after a Mugen V10 punctured my eardrum - and I was bloody spectating then ! Stable door and horse bolted and all that but I now wear moulded earplugs from Emtec for noisy racers and shooting - and you can hear engines clearly but aren't deafened by them . Ear defenders was the usual one ,how can you hear a out of control car with a dead engine ?the change of engine tone that is usually the warning of an impending drama ?
Butter Face said:
When we move cars at work now we have to do it in pairs with a 'Marshall' watching and the other driving, hazard lights on and a 5mph speed limit.
Our garage has been open for 20 years and nobody has ever been hit by a car!
That actually made me laugh a) because we do the same job and b) because it is bloody ridiculous.Our garage has been open for 20 years and nobody has ever been hit by a car!
coppice said:
It is easy to snipe at H and S but in my experience little , if any , is to do with the law per se but far too often is simply attributable to over zealous (and often not very bright ) individuals who take perverse pleasure in dreaming up daft protocols and procedures for the simplest of activities.
But .... in a workplace where there are real dangers H and S is fundamentally important. In a previous life I was involved in the legals on a couple of work related - and avoidable - deaths and it isn't nice.Whatever the Daily Mail might say about H and S I don't want to go back to the bad old days when factory deaths , injuries and diseases were a daily occurence- and without consequences for the employer .
I wrote the H&S assessment for a trial I was doing some years ago, handed it in to the H&S woman and when it came back, all signed off, it had several amendments. The one that springs to mind was where I'd said must wear sturdy boots with ankle support (involved walking around on uneven ground for 3 weeks), she'd replaced it with British Standard whatever boots that meant chemical resistant soles and steel toecaps (both unnecessary for the task), but didn't mention ankle support.But .... in a workplace where there are real dangers H and S is fundamentally important. In a previous life I was involved in the legals on a couple of work related - and avoidable - deaths and it isn't nice.Whatever the Daily Mail might say about H and S I don't want to go back to the bad old days when factory deaths , injuries and diseases were a daily occurence- and without consequences for the employer .
At the time they were a nightmare for H&S but I can understand why, 2 managers had a corporate manslaughter charge hanging over them for several years (they were eventually cleared) after guy died on a trial.
cambiker71 said:
egor110 said:
I work for a delivery company where none of the drivers are allowed to change tyres if there's a puncture.
Instead they have to phone the rac and wait.
This is because most people have no idea how to change a wheel correctly. Instead they have to phone the rac and wait.
Vans and trucks will often need the wheel nuts re torquing after a certain amount of time or mileage or both and delivery drivers will want to get to the end of delivery journeys.
Wheel torquing then gets forgotten and wheels then fall off.
It happens quite a lot surprisingly and nearly always because retorques haven't been carried out correctly due to the re torque labels given to the driver by the tyre fitter being ignored by drivers. Mercedes sprinters and the VW crafter version of the same van will often try to shed a newly fitted wheel if it's not retorqued properly!
You'd think the obvious answer would be put a big sticker exactly where the jacking point is not delay the drivers by making them wait for the rac to come.
Construction H&S makes me chuckle. The other day I did some RAMS for a project we're working on, some water main work outdoors. Nothing exciting, I've done hundreds of RAMS for this work before including for this client only a couple of months back, and all was accepted. Different site agent this time though, and he wanted me to note on the RAMS that the guys weren't going to be wearing shorts on site.
Bearing in mind it's December and we're working outdoors, along with the fact the site we're on has banned shorts for the last ten years anyway, I kinda figured that didn't really need stating. What else should I put on there: No thongs, no funny socks, no Christmas jumpers? Just where was I supposed to stop when it came to writing down what they shouldn't wear?!
I also enjoy it when you work at an airport, and you're outside in the middle of nowhere working above ground and you're told you must wear a hard hat. The only thing likely to fall on your head is a plane, and a hard hat isn't really going to do much.
Bearing in mind it's December and we're working outdoors, along with the fact the site we're on has banned shorts for the last ten years anyway, I kinda figured that didn't really need stating. What else should I put on there: No thongs, no funny socks, no Christmas jumpers? Just where was I supposed to stop when it came to writing down what they shouldn't wear?!
I also enjoy it when you work at an airport, and you're outside in the middle of nowhere working above ground and you're told you must wear a hard hat. The only thing likely to fall on your head is a plane, and a hard hat isn't really going to do much.
If we did a national survey to establish what percentage of the actual British public actually wants all this H&S legislation, I would be astonished if it was more than 5%. The German attitude mentioned earlier is the way forward. If people want to hurt themselves that really is their lookout.
I suspect a lot of it is just people using H&S as an excuse - general perception is that H&S legislation is (a) able to cover anything, and (b) often ridiculous, means that most people will accept "because it contravenes H&S" as a reason to not do something far easier than they would accept "because it's against company policy" or "because I told you not to".
Ekona said:
I also enjoy it when you work at an airport, and you're outside in the middle of nowhere working above ground and you're told you must wear a hard hat. The only thing likely to fall on your head is a plane, and a hard hat isn't really going to do much.
Whenever I've had to wear a hard hat I always keep smacking my head on things because the hat's 3" higher than my head so I never duck enough I suspect it's the compensation culture, whereby some think is ok to automatically sue someone when ever an unpredicted event happens. Companies are being forced to protect themselves. A very famous company I worked for did the usual occupancy risk assessment of us all sitting in front of CAD screens for +10hrs per day. They got a huge list of complaints and non compliances. They put all the filled in assessment forms in a box file, stuck them on the top shelf, and ignored them!!
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff