Do you care about your own health? Do you look out for your own safety, and that of your friends and colleagues? Of course you do, because you’re no doubt a nice human being who doesn’t set out to cause harm to anyone. Well, believe it or not, that’s exactly what the people behind health and safety laws are like too. Despite common misconceptions, they’re not actually out to stop you having any fun.
Occupational health and safety is concerned with protecting employees, and anyone else who may be affected by a workplace, from any dangers that occur as a result of their work. It involves identifying any potential hazards, estimating the risk of harm and, if necessary, putting measures in place to eliminate or minimise that risk. For instance, if you were working with extremely noisy machinery all day, you’d want some ear defenders to protect your hearing, right?
Often the phrase "Health & Safety" will be used by lazy obnoxious people as a vague reason for why they can’t let you do something, hence many people’s hatred of it. For example, a recent non-news item in the UK blamed health and safety rules for not letting a firefighter take his daughter to her prom in a fire engine. I suspect the real reason was that they need to use them for fighting fires! Seriously, do some people have no common sense at all?
As Rob Sharp wrote in The Independent at the end of last year, "health and safety myths, while amusing, are often singular events that are spun out of control by the media". Health and safety hasn't actually ‘gone mad’, it’s just the media’s distorted reporting of a few incidents which leads people to believe that’s the case. Especially if you are a regular reader of The Daily Mail, as they have a particular fondness for this kind of outrage.
People need to stop blaming rules they don’t like and start thinking for themselves for a change. Is that newspaper giving you all the facts? Are the rules there to prevent you getting hurt? There is a difference between a country’s laws governing health and safety and the rules that companies put in place to ensure they comply with those laws. Quite often it seems that the companies’ rules are not there to stop people getting hurt; they’re to limit liability if anyone sues.
Sadly, the same people who complain about health and safety regulations ruining all their fun are often the very people who will sue the local council because they tripped on a paving slab. So, in effect, the unfavourable situation they are complaining about is as a result of their own actions. Stop whining and start thinking! Not only will you perhaps prevent an accident some day, but you’ll also stop the rest of us from getting earache in the meantime.
Image via law_keven’s Flickr