05-07-2019, 10:24 PM
Further to all this discussion, the de facto acceptable levels of injury and death depend on the activity. For example, if any kid dies near a school bus, then clearly school bus safety was insufficient and must be improved. But if a kid dies due to being hit by a car, even in a location which is obviously designed in a grossly unsafe way (e.g., sidewalk separated from 80km/h traffic by nothing more than a normal curb), that’s just too bad. There is a similar double standard for public transportation as well, especially rail-based.
Of course it doesn’t help that some of our “safety” rules are actually disconnected from safety. I heard of a construction company that was destroyed because an incident on a neighbouring construction site killed 3 of its workers who were on break having lunch. Even though it was not a work-related injury (if the flying concrete or whatever it was had gone in a different direction, it would have killed somebody on the street instead of somebody next door; and the workers weren’t working — they were just sitting eating their lunches in a break room, not in the actual construction area), it still counted against their stats which made them un-hireable.
Of course it doesn’t help that some of our “safety” rules are actually disconnected from safety. I heard of a construction company that was destroyed because an incident on a neighbouring construction site killed 3 of its workers who were on break having lunch. Even though it was not a work-related injury (if the flying concrete or whatever it was had gone in a different direction, it would have killed somebody on the street instead of somebody next door; and the workers weren’t working — they were just sitting eating their lunches in a break room, not in the actual construction area), it still counted against their stats which made them un-hireable.