Autonomous Self and Safety

It strikes me, in retrospect, that this morning's comments on Health and Safety may have been construed as no more than a rant. Which is fair enough - it was to a large extent. And so to counter this I may need to do some serious theological thinking on H&S.

This thinking starts with the reflection that from dust we came, and to dust we will return. However safe we try to make ourselves, our lives will end. And that gives a kind of comparison.  If our lives were of endless natural duration, but we could lose them through accident, we would be far more careful than if our natural lifespans were 21 years - especially after the age of 20. What I'm saying is, it's all relative.

We shall have to make the assumption that we have a degree of free will. Clearly nobody has completely  free will - their actions will always be influenced by current constraints, the state of their digestion, their upbringing and so on. But, on the other hand, if we have no free will and live in a totally deterministic universe, then we may as well resign ourselves to our fate. We would have no choice but to resign ourselves to whatever a capricious Universal Will decided what might be fun. Basically, in a deterministic universe there's no point running. If you're sure to get run over by a JCB you may as well go and lay down in its path and get it over with. No point hiding in a foreign country so somebody's got to go to all the trouble and expense of shipping a JCB out there, hunting you down and running you over. Where's the fun in that? And there's no sense hiding in your bed in your fifteenth-floor flat. Fate may have to take a lot of trouble getting the JCB up the stairs, but it'll make sure it happens.

No, we must have some free will or there is no point either in Health, or Safety. And we must assume we have some kind of responsibility, for no man is an island entire of itself. If you fall from the warehouse racking then there are not just consequences for you. There are consequences for your widow or widower.  For your children. For your employer. For the lawyer whom your relict now will employ to sue the pants off the employer on a no-win, no-fee basis. For the bloke from the Health and Safety Executive, who was looking forward to slipping off early this Friday for a dirty weekend in Haywards Heath but will now have to schlep down to Daventry to inspect the white chalk outline where you previously lay. And the HSE bloke's missus isn't going to go unaffected in all this. Nor the hoteliers of Haywards Heath, who will have yet another cancelled booking to deal with. Before you know it (not that you will - because you've been scraped off the place where the white chalk outline is, and rolled up to fit in the box) there's a massive network of people all over the country mourning, making money, or with another bedroom to let, and all because you couldn't be bothered to get the airplane steps and just climbed up on the racking instead. And it's no good getting angry with you, because you're well out of it dead and left everybody else in it, you selfish so and so. Typical of you, that is, getting yourself killed and then not taking responsibility for the consequences.

Sorry.  Where was I? Ah yes.You see, contrary to popular opinion, Health and Safety is not about the total elimination of risk. If it were, we'd all be dead. As the only way to ensure we're not the unfortunate victim of a road traffic accident is to stay in bed. And if everyone did that we'd all starve. Safely.

If anyone says that the only acceptable number of accidents is zero, then they don't understand the issue. The only way for a business - even an office acting as an arms-length value-added reseller of soft cushions - not to have any accidents is to do no trade. Never to open the door. And if the supermarkets and farmers (dangerous activity, farming) and fisherpeople (very dangerous activity, fishing) and transport hauliers all adopted this theory - we'd all starve to death.

And we care deeply about keeping children safe. But between the risk of infectious diseases, or of a frightening book allergy, and the danger of little Jimmy or, as it may be, Jade skinning their knees on the playground, you can't eliminate all risk from school, without closing all the schools. And the result of that, after the country lost all competitiveness in world markets, would be that we all eventually starved to death  So you can see that the consequence of being very safe is starving to death, no matter how you look at it.

No, merely opening the door of the office in the morning - even going to the office - is taking a risk, however calculated and small. So we have to balance the good effects of industry against the risk and ill-effects of accident. And the proper role of Health and Safety is to get that balance right - keeping the risk of serious injury appropriately small while still going about our personal lives.

But there are things that weight towards the safe end. The obvious one being that the result of a serious accident of any kind is that a lawyer gets involved and it costs everyone a fortune. Whereas if we're all uber-safe, even the lawyers will starve to death. So the fear of big legal costs pushes us from the right balance point to a dangerously cowardly one. The answer in my opinion is to ban lawyers from ever going out of their houses, but apparently that increases the chances of them starving to death. And that's against Health and Safety.

Finally I will point out that among the oldest Health and Safety regulations we have is this from Dt 22:8

"When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof."

In other words, it's not telling you not to let people walk around on your roof - for they have free will, and you may have a nice view from your roof. Why shouldn't people walk around on your roof, if you let them? Obviously, you want a bit of a veto. After all - it's your roof. You don't want just anyone up there. Especially not if they have a JCB and you suspect this may be a totally deterministic universe. But after appropriate training, and signing a waiver, and wearing a hi-viz and safety goggles and hard hat, why not tell them they can go ahead - have a walk on the roof.

But some people are dim. Some don't have that aversion to falling from heights that most people have evolved. They may come from Holland or Norfolk, where having a fear of heights brings no real evolutionary advantage. So, specially for these people - or for the ones you've invited to a special "flat roof party" - put a parapet around, says the Good Book. That'll stop them inadvertently plummeting off while looking in the other direction. If they climb over the parapet - against all the training and the "Roof Instruction Manual" you gave them before letting them out - and they have removed the safety harness with which you fitted them, with its two hooks clamping them onto the safety rail you put on your parapet - if, after all that, you still see them dropping past the window with a startled look on your face - then it's their own fault. Their blood is not on your head (not, at least, unless you broke their fall). And the only people that will starve to death will be the lawyers.