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Show PAGE 34 THE ZEPHYR AUGUST 1994 Somewhere Left of Right because we can trust the government to do a better job of figuring these things out for us. There's the Food and Drug Administration which makes sure each helpful new medicine doesn't come on the market until at least 10 years have passed and hundreds of thousands of dollars have changed hands. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was established in 1970. They have a lot of impressive safety statistics. Yes, I'm sure a lot of lives have been saved because of their stringent and expensive safety requirements. But another thing OSHA has done is to keep y businesses from hiring any employee, if they value trusting their own ability to make business with small but steady profits. Take on that first decision, and want a OSHA and takes over your life. employee The Department of Transportation (DOT) is responsible for many areas of national safety. They watch over safety issues for the Coast Guard, for our aviation, highway, and railroad administration, for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and file Urban Mass Transportation Administration. Utah's own state transportation department, UDOT, looks after our state roads. They're so focused on safety that they won't let us have any new traffic lights in Moab, although many of us have had near misses at a couple of dangerous intersections in town. It will take somebody getting killed to speed filing up a bit To continue the rundown (a very small pun), there's also the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the people who are generally a day late and a dollar short when we have a weather disaster or other large-scal- e emergency. FEMA has under its wings the Civil Defense Preparedness Agency and the United States Fire Administration. Great I feel safer already. And then there's that Department of Energy watching over our power plants. There's the National Fire Protection Association, responsible for developing and distributing those lovely national fire codes. Now, I must admit if pressed, that fire codes have some actual safety justification. They can prevent some fires in certain special circumstances. The average American will readily give up some individual freedom for better fire safety in their community. However, I am firmly convinced that these code, in the hands of government officials, are but the shoe horn, the tod to soften us up. After we have agreed to some arbitrary building restrictions based on fire code, it is hoped well meekly accept other, more intrusive language into our local ordinance, language whidi restricts our basic freedoms without having anything to do with health and safety. And it has worked all over America. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) finds someone to blame when air and railroad crashes occur. The National Council of Public Works Improvement keeps us safe by assessing the condition of our mass transit system, our waste disposal facilities, and our nation's highways. (That last assessment job shouldn't be too difficult they're dd and all worn out). We've got "safety acts coming out of our ears: Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, Consumer Product Safety Act, Flammable Fabrics Act, Federal Hazardous Substances Act, Poison Prevention Packaging Act, Refrigerator Safety Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (also known as Superfund), and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodentidde Act...to name a few. Internationally, there's the International Labor Organization representing 40 nations an safety matters of governments, employer, and worker, the World Health Organization to keep us safe by collecting data on deaths and disease, and the International Occupational Safety and Health Information Center which operates offices in nearly 50 countries to collect and disseminate health and safety statistics This is not a complete list by any means. But it is obvious that safety has become institutionalized. In fact, we're so safe now, it's sickening. It's sickening because people are still dying like flies, of every acddent imaginable, and they're getting stupider by the second. one-famil- low-overhe- safety-consciou-s By Jane S. Jones THE SAFE GENERATION.. IT'S NOT MY FAULT Scenario 1: After being dropped off by parents, a toddler slips unnoticed out the back door of a child care facility, wanders over to an irrigation ditch and drowns. It's a terrible, senseless accident that breaks your heart. The media reports the door was inadvertently left unlocked and that officials are considering expanding the state's licensing regulations to indude all child care facilities. The child care business where file accident occurred was not regulated by the state. It was small and currently only larger facilities are licensed. License requirements indude controlled entrances and exits, such as a fenced yard off a back door. Scenario! The same event occurs. The death of five toddler is shocking to everyone who hears about it News reports relate the pattern of oversights that resulted in the accident. The slant of the story is how working parents are often busy and distracted and can fail to attend to their children's safety. A child care expert reminds parents to take time to assess any type of day care facility and to feel free to make suggestions to the people in charge. The news story ends by reminding everyone that unfortunately, fatal accidents are inevitable someplace, somewhere as long as human beings of any age have the freedom to move and explore. Which scenario is based in recent fact? It's Scenario 1 and it happened over in Colorado. It's a sign of our times that the business was harshly blamed, and die parents were not, and increased state regulation was seen as the solution. Clearly, when a parent takes a child to a care facility, they aren't expected to be the one responsibile for determining if the facility is safe or not. It's a familiar pattern: flatly deny the possibility that any risk can be allowed to exist in our society. Also, frantically look for someone in particular to blame, to be file scapegoat and then quickly make new government regulations that supposedly will remove the risk so the particular accident will never happen again. Once you start watching, there are examples in the newspaper almost every day. - RISK AVERSION SYNDROME DISEASE OF THE 21ST CENTURY Risk Aversion Syndrome it's my name for the common ailment where a person is actually unable to knowingly face any risk. The victim denies the dangerous unpredictability of living. This syndrome has its basis in a flawed assumption: that life can and should be lived without risk. Without much notice, it has snuck into and become a part of our culture. How did this happen? - A BRIEF HISTORY OF SAFETY In the early history of humankind, accidents were regarded as inevitable. Or just the will of the gods. It was usual to expect a certain amount of unexpected injury and death to those you loved, caused by both catastrophic disasters and ordinary home accidents. No matter how careful you were, if your mind wandered at the wrong time, you could pay a heavy price. The unexpected was expected. For a while, as society changed and became more sophisticated, it was still accepted that your safety was your own responsibility, whether you worked for yourself or for someone else. With the Industrial Revolution came ever larger numbers ofpeople working. The age of the employee had begun. And with it came the beginnings of our modem ideas of safety. The toll of factory accidents was terrible. In the largest industries, severe injuries and loss of life became common occurrences. It wasn't long until businesses learned that it was in their interest to be more safety amadous. Bosses saw that accidents interrupted production, raised operating costs, and farmed the basis for future injuries and loss of equipment In the 1860's, the first accident prevention associations were formed in Europe. In 1880, England passed the Employers' liability Act, where disabled workers could sue for damages. Then came workmen's compensation acts, which forced employers to carry insurance for employee injuries. Similar laws came to file United States in the early 20th century. The Association of Iron and Steel Electrical Engineers began promoting safety in 1907, and in 1913, the National Safety Council, now the world's largest safety body, was formed as a cooperative association to analyze accident causes and promote safety education. As is usual in the course of human schemes, we followed our nose on fills safety thing throughout the century. I doubt that anyone knew what we were getting into. 4 LAND OF THE FREE, THE BRAVE, AND THE SAFE to be critical of any of the Well, filing sure have snowballed. I know it's wonderful American progressive thing that have happened since the turn of the century, but only in America could a good idea be overdone so thoroughly. There's the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which has a great big long list of things to keep safe, like administering the safety of our nice dean air and nice dean water (which they're doing a really good job of, yessiree, left give 'em some more money). There's the ConsuTwr Product Safety Commission which approves whether products are safe. We consumers are taught not to worry our little heads about whether a product is safe or not anti-Americ- I M an DO YOU HAVE THE SYMPTOMS? Are you a "safety first" kind of person? Perhaps you have been conditioned by our cultural environment to expect that by doing the "right thing" you will automatically protect yourself and your family and significant others from harm. Yes, when you have Ride Aversion Syndrome, you are comforted by the conviction that life can and should be lived risk free. Perhaps you believe all storage structures should be outlawed because black widow spiders might decide to live there and become a danger to an Inquisitive child wandering around the neighborhood. Perhaps you feel a lot safer paying out hundreds of dollars each month, year after year, with the good probability that you'll never even get your money bade. It's called insurance, and the big companies who sell it are laughing all the way to the bank as you keep paying those premiums. Ye, I know. Sometimes insurance is very helpful. And sometimes you could have put those premiums away in your own investment account, and borrowed against it and the valuable assets you could have purchased with it to pay those health expense bills on your own. But, hey, don't think about it, just pay over those health and life insurance premiums so you can fed safe and achieve "peace of mind. Remember the floods in Georgia a few weeks ago? It was brought out that some of the private levies had failed. They weren't regulated by the government. Individuals had built them and had maintained them over the last 50 years or so. Never mind that government levies built - Fd lilts to take a break from my busy work day to remember the 25th birthday of WOODSTOCK. |