That's a real basket load of issues but it's not clear if the 7 events were over the entire 25+ years, or a more recent trend. If the latter, is it age, health, stress, fatigue, work pressure? Have some job factors changed for him? Is he dissatisfied about something?

Either way, I'm sticking with my assertion that everything, from forgetting something (rear doors), to intentional (failing to give way), has cause(s), but they may be beyond our current knowledge to identify or correct. Have you talked to him openly and without blame to see if he has anything going on in his life that is pressuring or distracting him?

Good luck...

I find this topic fascinating. Having read all opinions so far, I am going to be a bit foolish and try to condense what I have read into two opposite but complimentary notions:

1. "Human error" is a weak conclusion, because all we can go a step further to find out why people make decisions and try to engineer out the opportunities to, or consequences of, making these "mistakes".

2. Unreliability of humans is "inevitable". We are, after all, "general practitioners" in this world. We have wide skills but can't be perfect at any of them.

What I see in safety management are conversations dominated by an approach focussed almost entirely on managing hazards. People aren't allowed to "own" risk. We want to withhold ownership, because we are responsible and may be personally liable. Something a bit different is needed. We rarely see conversations about enabling workers to take ownership of whatever residual risk remains after what is "reasonably practicable" has been done.The post above by Brian Parker about a driver not securing a load is a good example of where we cannot hold onto the ownership. As Brian says, the drivers work alone and the variables of securing loads are huge, if not infinite.

I don't at all like using "personal accountability" as a way of scaring workers into thinking about what they are doing. It's just a type of blaming. But I think the concept of risk is something all humans are naturally good at. All animals, particularly wild ones do it, and they are highly conservative about it.

When I give training in hazard and risk management, I get groups to intuitively rank hazards as to "how bad" they are. Then, we do the risk calculating thing (two versions) and invariably, the rankings come out very similarly compared to the intuitive way. We may have created risk assessment tools, but they are no use at all minute by minute. The good news is that we use that intuition constantly and we're good at it. But we don't like to talk to workers about how to take reasonable risks.

I'm suggesting that a no-blame conversation should be going on all the time that literally lets go part of the control and lets workers own it. When I was teaching my daughter to drive, she had a tendency to feel stressed while waiting to pull out of T junctions. Confidence grows with experience, but what I said to her was classic risk management: "It may be unlikely that you will get T-boned pulling out, but if you do, you could be dead. So unless you have almost 100% certainty, don't do it". Notice, I didn't say "You'd be stupid to rush, so I don't ever want to see you do that". I think, (at least I hope), I gave her ownership and some basic thinking skills.

I believe that sort of approach is missing in traditional safety management. It would take time, but we're only talking about residual risk. I'm not flying this as a panacea, but I believe it has its place. It's about instilling responsibility, not accountability, giving recognition and support to workers when they haven't yet reached a level of certainty, and placing importance on their own decision-making. I'd be interested in other comments about this suggestion.

Testing notifications out of the Forum, please disregard. Simon

My personal opinion about the topic is that any human error has a cause. Unless the person sets out to injure themselves, the reasons can be almost infinite. From lack of knowledge, to work pressure, lack of tools or equipment, stress, distraction and simply not enough physical safeguards. Humans don't normally behave in a random way unless the brain has a fault that triggers illogical or involuntary behaviour.

And most accidents have a sequence, or combination of failures.

Therefore, in almost all cases, there is a cause involved but we generally don't have enough investigative skills to find the intangible ones like fatigue, stress, work pressure. On the other hand, my observation over years of viewing the average investigation, is we don't have the skills to even find obvious physical causes either. Accident investigation is something of a hidden art, available to very few people.

We need to remember that the article was written by a journalist (no criticism intended Peter). The terms "human error" and in particular, "complacency" are appallingly archaic . Sounds the same as "Told him/her to be more careful in future". However, the paragraph that lists root causes sounds like a good investigation. There were also additional causes of lack of understanding and instruction, fatigue, dietary options (energy drinks) and the injured worker's arrogant attitude."

Leaving aside the vacuous statement about arrogant attitude, (they knew he had an attitude and let him continue to use a lathe, then when the poo hit the fan, they pulled it out of the drawer. I'd have kept quiet. That's having your cake and eating it too). None of the causes were, in fact, human ERROR. They appeared to be evidence of lack of knowledge, or human FACTORS, like stress and fatigue.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone as to how many SafePlus assessments are going on (using actual Assessors, as opposed to de facto or self assessments). I'd also like to hear how the experience went for them. I'm not hearing anything so I suspect not much is happening. But I could be wrong.

Speaking as someone who supplies external advice, assessments of compliance and audits to employers, I am convinced that the pre-qualification "industry" is as shallow as an oil slick. It would not even exist if not for desperate and misguided employers who go along with it in the hope that it gets the OHS monkey off their backs. It doesn't.

When a contractor turns up at a work site and gets injured, all the paper in the world will be thrown out the window if the people with duties to that person haven't exercised them.Those duties, (and the only ones that stop blood being spilled), include agreed safe work plans, regular monitoring, supervision, spot checks, collaboration and application of rules. People talking to people. Getting off arses. So what's the value of pre-qualification to any party when push comes to shove? I'm willing to listen, but the only tangible benefit I can see for all this bureaucracy is in the pockets of the agencies that provide the so-called "service".

Simon Lawrence, previous Forum member. Self employed OHS consultant. Involved in the "systems" side of OHS - safety management systems, audits, coaching, development and training. I have to admit getting what Peter describes here as a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket once or twice previously. But I'm a good boy really.

Very much looking forward to engaging with discussions on here. On first impressions, it has a nice, simple format for topics. Yet to see how notifications work but already a huge step forward from the previous email based system.

Well done Peter, it's good to see the Forum back.