Rather than enacting more health and safety rules, would it not be better to employ more rational risk assessment?
 Advances in technology, such as improvements in drivers’ cabs, has enhanced worker safety substantially according to speakers at a port safety webinar jointly hosted by the International Cargo Handling Coordination Association (ICHCA) and Port Technology International.
While the ICHCA views are worthy of discussion and fullest consideration, there are many who would not like to see all their strictures be accepted at face value without full consideration of the downsides involved.
Many stakeholders simply don't like any more rules and regulations than they must cope with already. Health and safety manager Lee James, who works at DP World’s terminal in Southampton admits to finding "often-strong resistance to what might be seen as unnecessary change".
Said Mr James: “You hear people say if it’s not broken why fix it, but in my opinion, you have to ask why wait until something breaks before you fix it?”
Put bluntly, maximising safety maximises expense. For example if one makes compulsory seatbelts in cars or motorcycle helmets enforcible law one crosses the civil liberties line that one should be free to take on risks one chooses for oneself. Or one undermines a civil liberty that would certainly ban the use of submersibles such as the one that ended tragically in the hunt for artifacts aboard the Titanic wreck.
The successful argument made on behalf safety lobbies such as the ICHCA, though by no means limited to that body alone, is that so much of the expense of accidents, medical care, courtroom haggling, and like os paid by the state. That fact gives the state the right to insist on such things are compulsory seat belts motorcycle helmets.
That argument is essentially financial. Since the cost of liberty falls on the state, it is right and proper for the state to insist that its expense be mitigated through the imposition of safety measures.
Very well, but looking at big picture, it is only fair to examine the costs of safety. If we do, one finds that the expense of installing seat belts, air bags, baby seats etc in each and every car, will vastly surpass the costs of injury or death that can be blamed on the absence of such devices. There was also an actuarial finding that suggested that while seat belts prevented deaths, the very fact that they did so, increased the number of maimings and extended care costs that again far surpass the cost of a burial.
At this point one finds safety advocates become emotional, saying safety issues are more important than mere money - quite forgetting that financial costs of individual liberty was their issue in the first place. It was the safety lobby that cited expense - state expense - that justified novel transgressions of what were hitherto considered a matter of individual choice. But when one plans a more thoroughgoing cost/benefit analsysis, dealing with actual outcomes rather than intention of such safety measures, the safely lobby cries foul on the grounds that such considerations are too heartless to be contemplated.
But let us consider statements from the ICHCA webinar, entitled How to Innovate for Workplace Safety in Ports and Terminals that discussed discussed key issues of workforce safety.
As far as the ICHCA is concerned, there is already resistance to the "safety-first-and-always" notion.
"The industry figures speaking where in agreement that technological innovation must be accompanied with buy-in from all port users and stakeholders is critical to keep all users safe," says the ICHCA press release.
ICHCA CEO Richard Steele told attendees that there had been 354 shore-based fatalities, including 349 port workers and 20 truckers globally since the year 2000.
This, he said, made it essential for the cargo industry to keep on proactively searching for ways to improve health and safety; building on what has worked and looking for new ways to address risk.
But is that necessarily so? Did anyone ask about the accident rate over the previous two decades. We would have to take into consideration that waterfront employment has been reduced by 66 per cent from 1980 to 2020 because of automation.
Mr Steele said: “The key thing that industry can do is to agree common good practice and then act as champions, role modelling those good values and creating expectation of standards across the industry.”
Safety and sustainability advisors Rombit CEO Evert Bulcke explained that technology in a driver’s cab that acts as a constant remainder to drivers to perform their tasks safely can result in a significant decline in accidents, by as much as 80 per cent.
“To be successful you need training and procedures, supported by continuous training and alerting through digital tools,” said Mr Bulcke.
Mr Bulcke pointed out that maintenance, energy and repair costs were reduced by around US$5,000 per vehicle, per year, from such innovations as the real time digital coach, while the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that around 70 per cent of all lift and crane accidents could be prevented through training and the application of digital tools.
Unions, of course weigh in, but also hint at a certain unwillingness to accept more expensive and burdensome health and safety measures.
Steve Biggs, a senior assistant for the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) emphasised the importance of making sure that changes to work practices were agreed with staff, getting their “buy-in”. Only then could new technological fixes and innovations in work practices be successfully applied.
Mr Steele agreed, pointing out that the IMO provides excellent international regulations, but once national borders are crossed, regulatory frameworks are individual and it becomes more complex to try to get uniform application of procedures. Industry itself has an ongoing responsibility to all of its stakeholders to continue to show health and safety leadership.
Said the ICHCA press release: "Safety rules need to be reiterated constantly, but that must be combined with visible and felt health and safety leadership from management to the shop floor. All of which can then be supplemented by tech that produces data and can monitor safety performance."
These are the establishment sentiments that got Donald Trump elected. It's not that "safety rules need to be reiterated constantly," but rather they must be re-examined with a view establishing their utility based on a fresh rational risk assessment taking in all factor and not just what those health and safety lobbyists feel relevant. |
