Safety First, Second, or by Random Selection?
David J. Ball
Middlesex University, School of Health, Biological and
Environmental
Sciences, London N19 5ND, UK
Introduction An all too
familiar attribute of injury prevention activities, and safety issues in
general, is their ability to generate public controversy. The fact that
disputes are common whenever questions of safety (or risk) are raised is
frequently attributed by professionals to ignorance and failures of rationality
on the part of the wider public, or, failing that, to the ways in which the
media handle safety issues. Although many authors have contested this simple
proposition and indeed there is evidence that public concerns are not nearly as
wayward as some suggest,1-4 the view nonetheless remains deeply
entrenched. That this is so is evidenced by the continuing popularity, in some
academic circles, of research programmes on the public understanding of science
and perception of risk.
However,
there is at least one other plausible explanation of the disputatious nature of
safety which, although largely ignored, warrants consideration. This is the
question of to the extent to which the numerous professional agencies involved,
which range from international agencies to government departments, regulators,
insurers, trade organisations, standards-setting bodies, academic institutions,
consumer rights groups, solicitors and the courts, themselves have either a
consistent or a rational approach to safety, and, in turn, how this impacts
upon the public psyche.
Thus,
the intention of this paper is to shift the spotlight away from the public’s
alleged fallibilities and instead to consider professional and associated
cultural perspectives on safety which are encountered in the field of risk and
safety. The hypothesis is that there is far more to safety controversies than
simple public misunderstanding of science or misperception of risk, and that a
significant part of the problem lies in fact in a continuing failure by
professions to expose the assumptions and choices peculiar to their own
traditional decision making processes to proper debate.
Safety
as viewed by the professions It should first be acknowledged that whenever hazards become
a focus of attention, professional bodies face many dilemmas because of
pressure to respond quickly. Frequently-adopted strategies in this case include
going along with either someone else’s forcefully stated position, or the
majority position, or adopting a strategy which is believed will deter any
suggestion of indifference or incompetence.
For those agencies who are actually managing hazards, another common
response is to take actions which will deter claims of negligence. Unfortunately,
none of these is guaranteed to be the most favourable option so far as injury
prevention or risk management is concerned, let alone the wider public interest
of which safety is but one priority. Agencies which adopt a more forceful
position and attract others to their cause are not necessarily right. Indeed,
it may be the case that followers do not understand what motivates a
self-appointed lead agency to adopt a particular position, and if they did they
might find it to be inconsistent with their own requirements.
In
other circumstances agencies may go their different ways, adopting their own
strategies, based on particular professional beliefs and ways of working. This
could occur in situations where communication between agencies has historically
been decoupled. The effective outcome may be to cocoon particular ways of
working such that each develops along paths of its own without heed of others.
Thus, specialisation becomes a double-edged sword in that while it may foster a
high degree of expertise, that expertise can all too easily become out of
kilter with what goes on elsewhere or what is preferable, leading to a
fragmented and even corrupted system. Ultimately this can lead to entrenchment
and alienation, and a diminution of what might have been achieved had a more
open system existed in which each would have had the time and opportunity to
learn from the experiences of others and to agree strategic principles.
It
is often the case that vested interests are impugned in controversies over the
management of risk, including human safety. As rightly implied by Sapolsky,5
one of the drivers of vested interest is material gain. However, as he also
remarks, this is far from all. Many other factors may contribute, including
status, professional cultures, homespun ideologies, and so on, all of which
influence the positions adopted by individual agencies and the measures to
which they subscribe.
One
has only to listen to the continuing debate on safety as portrayed in the
media, or to attend a major conference on injury prevention, to realise that
there are many different concepts of what constitutes safety and good risk
management, even amongst professionals. Rifts are by no means solely associated
with the professional-public interface. Sometimes differences are attributable
to disagreements over technical matters such as data interpretation. However,
there is frequently present a deeper level of discord which, being hardly
discussed, is more serious. This is to do with the concept of safety itself. In
fact, it is clear that safety means different things to different people, and
this in turn reflects itself in their ultimate priorities.6 The
point is summarised by Table 1 which outlines the principles and
characteristics of eight approaches to safety, all of which may be observed in
operation in contemporary society in one place or another.
Spectre of litigation As one
example, the problem of contrasting professional understandings of what
constitutes safety is amply demonstrated by court procedures which, for some
players at least, generate a lose-lose syndrome. When accidents occur and
litigation is entered into, there is a strong tendency for lower courts, and
the experts who act on behalf of injured parties, to rely solely upon
comparison of accident circumstances with whatever written standards or advice
can be found as a measure of culpability (i.e. as in column 3 of Table 1). The
paradox is that standards and advice in many cases are not based upon risk
assessment or considerations of practicability (as in column 8), which are
supposed to be the current mainstay of UK safety regulation. In fact, standards have largely been the
domain of ‘industry and trade, and with (only) a modest input from consumer
representatives.’7 There is, furthermore, a feeling in some quarters
that industry-based standards may be more or less strict depending on a host of
factors more connected with commercial interests than consumer safety. So,
while an agency responsible for managing a number of hazards may have done
everything that was reasonable in the way of identifying hazards, measuring
risks, and adopting practicable solutions, all fully in accord with the higher
level definitions of safety and even case law, it may still fall foul of
procedures which assign highly literal interpretations to advisory documents
and this may well be judged a sufficient test of negligence by a lower
court.
The disturbing feature of this is that authorities with strategic responsibilities are deterred from exercising that responsibility by a powerful culture which is used to relying almost exclusively on judgement (though they may be unaware of it) and hardly if at all on scientific evaluation. Instead, responsible authorities are encouraged to adopt what may be purely value-based recommendations that constitute no more than talismans for warding off potential litigation. Yet, while science and risk assessment certainly do not have all the answers, most would probably agree it is churlish if not irresponsible to disregard them in their entirety. The danger must exist that failure to critically assess the effectiveness of proposed safety measures, before and after implementation, by whatever means are available, increases the risk of more harm rather than less, and constitutes a potential waste of public and private money, not to mention the large volume of research now being undertaken in the field of injury prevention.
Concluding Remarks Different
groups concerned with safety, sometimes formed along professional lines, tend
to adhere to their own perspectives, passing others like ships in the night. It
requires little imagination to contemplate the kind of effect which such a
diversity of decision criteria and decision processes may have upon the public
as recipient, particularly given the propensity of the media for sniffing out
and highlighting inconsistencies. However, it would be incorrect to lay the
blame for this at the door of either the media or the public. The problem lies
with the inadequate attention paid to crucial and underlying philosophical
issues about how far we want to go in implementing safety measures, what we are
prepared to sacrifice in achieving certain goals, and how we should choose. In
many cases these issues are mysteriously not addressed at all and may even be
deliberately avoided. The consequence is that the system contains a substantial
element of chaos, for one can never quite be sure which set of rules or
procedures will dominate in the end in any particular situation. Neither is it
only the public who are affected. The net effect upon duty holders - those with
responsibilities for safety - can also be nigh on disastrous.
References
1. Irwin A. and Wynne B. Misunderstanding
science? The public reconstruction of science and technology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
2. Slovic P. Perception of risk: reflections on the psychometric
paradigm. In: Krimsky S. and Golding D. editors. Social theories of risk.
Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger: 1992: 117-152.
3. Schwarz M. and Thompson M. Divided we stand - redefining politics,
technology and social choice. Hemel
Hempstead UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf publisher: 1990.
4. Houghton J. R., Murray E. and Ball D.
J. Risk ranking by the British public:
a survey of worry about a broad spectrum of risk issues. Human and Ecological Research 1999; 5 (3):
509-526.
5. Sapolsky H. M. The politics of risk. Daedalus 1990;119 (4): 83-96.
6. Ball D. J. Ships in the night and the
quest for safety, Injury Control and Safety Promotion, 2000; 7 (2): 83-96.
7. Rogmans W. Europe signposts a safer world; the way ahead for consumer safety
in Europe. International Journal for
Consumer and Product Safety 1997; 4, (4): 215-221.
|
Safety criterion |
Zero risk |
Safety targets |
Standards, CoPsc and guidance |
Absolute risk |
Risk factors |
Risk assessment |
Cost-benefit analysis |
Risk tolerability and ALARPd |
|
Typical
adherents |
Pressure
groups |
National and
international agencies. Major
industries |
Traditional
industries, lower courts, accident investigators |
Actuaries and
natural scientists |
Epidemiologists and
health scientists |
Safety engineers
and applied scientists |
Economists |
Higher courts,
regulatory bodies, international agencies and major industries |
|
Basis
of approach |
Commitment |
Political
desire |
Expert
judgement |
Historical
data |
Evidence |
Scientific
simulation |
Utility
theory |
Case law (in the
UK) |
|
Strengths |
Simplicity,
single-mindedness |
Clarity
of overall policy goal |
Should reflect a
broad swathe of expert opinion. Tested
over time |
Enables insurance
companies to set premia |
Scientific
basis |
Analytical tool.
Ability to forecast the unknown |
Considers both
costs and benefits of safety measures |
Considers wider implications
of safety measures including cost, practicality and other consequences |
|
Limitations |
Associated benefits
foregone. Cost of control disregarded |
Top down approach
which may be inconsistent with the sum total of individual safety interventions |
Validity and
motivation of judgements unclear. A
bottom up approach which may be inconsistent with policy goals |
Other social
priorities are disregarded |
Uncertainties,
causality, and the question of ‘how safe is safe enough?’ |
Uncertainties in
assumptions, probabilities and dose-response functions |
Anchored in a
particular philosophy. Hidden
assumptions and methodological problems, particularly in valuing benefits |
Difficulty of
striking a balance between competing attributes of a decision |
|
Examples |
‘Vision Zero’, hand
gun control, machinery guards, food additives |
Injury
targets. Air quality guidelines.
Sustainability |
Product safety
standards. Workplace CoPs. Numerous
personal injury court cases |
Simple comparison of
risks from different activities |
Public exposure to
radon and air pollution, playground safety |
Occupational
safety assessment |
Railway and
offshore safety investment decisions and major hazard control |
Major hazard
control, strategic planning applications |
Table 1: Eight different concepts of ‘safety’ with an indication of their
origins and predominant professional affiliations. An attempt has been made to
present these as a spectrum, with more politically-inspired or value-driven approaches
on the left, with more science-based approaches in the centre, and with more
pragmatic hybrids to the right. These divisions are not, however, clear-cut.6
cCodes of
Practice; dAs Low As Reasonably Practicable
Note. A version of this article appeared
under the title “Ships in the night and the quest for safety” in the journal Injury
Control and Safety Promotion, 2000; 7 (2), pp 83-96, published by Swets and
Zeitlinger 2000.
D.Ball@mdx.ac.uk