Wednesday 16 December 2009

Put Not Your Faith In Safety Restrictions…

Hard not to feel sympathy for the owner of the track on which a young girl who’d probably never even heard of Isadora Duncan died, and his obvious anguished bafflement that the modern ritual of appeasing the H&S gods has failed:
'We have such strict safety restrictions - this should never have happened. '
Nothing wrong with your safety restrictions. They weren’t lacking, this isn’t some freak, hitherto unseen fault that a new set of safety restrictions will prevent from ever happening again.

This was a case of irresponsible people failing to apply those safety restrictions.

And nothing will ever prevent that from happening:
Mr Meakins said Kilvin's responsibilities as marshal included making sure clients were wearing helmets, adjusting the cars and monitor the races.

But he said Kilvin had chosen to take part in driving himself so nobody was watching the track when the accident occurred.

He added: 'I have seven members of staff here and Andy was the second most experienced so he would have known the safety rules categorically.

There are no excuses whatsoever.'
Actually, there’s the oldest one in the book. Human nature.

People do things. Stupid things. Fatal things. And sometimes other people pay the price.

3 comments:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Making sure they were wearing helmets?

Just that?

No overalls required? No check for loose clothing?

Hmm. The sympathy meter is barely lifting off the stop. I think these people are on a hiding to nothing on plain ordinary common sense grounds, never mind modern Elven Safety.

I hope they've got good insurance* and clever lawyers, they're going to need both.

* But not too good, because there's an obvious get-out on the claim: "you were not following your own procedures, you're not covered".

Constantly Furious said...

The kart track involved is about a mile from where I live, and I've taken my kids there on several occasions, from the age of 12 onwards.

They've always been diligent on procedures, including not letting one daughter go on because - if you pushed her hair down - she was about 1cm less than the minimum height allowed.

This wasn't about a failure in procedures, it was about a rogue employee letting his mates play with dangerous gear 'after hours'.

It will be a travesty in any blame is attached to the owners.

JuliaM said...

"Making sure they were wearing helmets?

Just that? "


I'd hope it was a bit more than that!

"It will be a travesty in any blame is attached to the owners."

It will indeed. But they are the ones with the money and so any compensation claim will likely target them...