The Dangerous Machine
April 5th, 2010Imagine if you will a machine that almost anyone can buy and operate. You read the training manual, practice it’s use under the supervision of someone who is also a user and has some proficiency of it’s operation. Finally, you take a test to see if you too have basic proficiency in it’s operation. If you pass, the supervisor lets you use the machine with minimal oversight as you see fit.
Over time, the machine is upgraded with new functions and capabilities. The circumstances that you use it in also change gradually. More machines are present in the area where you work and others use them to do more work more quickly.
Some safety rules are developed for your protection, but they are not always fully communicated to you so that you learn them. In fact, you are allowed to make mistakes or deliberately misuse the machine with only minimal consequences. If you really mess up or make a large number of mistakes you may have to quit using the machine for a while. You don’t lose your job or even have to upgrade your skills.
These machines kill one person a day and injure hundreds of others. No one gets too upset unless these people are friends or family, after all, the costs for this are spread over us all and we pay an amount for it each year regardless of whether we cause the problem or not.
If I were actually describing a machine in your workplace you might refuse to use it or go on strike until your employer made safety improvements. Why don’t we get excited when the machine is our own motor vehicle?
Cst. Tim Schewe (Ret) is the author of the Behind The Wheel column. He has been writing the column for most of the 20 years of his traffic enforcement service in the RCMP. In January 2006, Schewe retired from the force and resides in Vancouver Island. You can visit his website at http://www.drivesmartbc.ca/
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Insightful column with some good points; however you seem to think about cars like they’re toaster’s.
There is more to motor vehicles than just getting from A to B; and in my experience the people that tend to be hazardous in their cars are the ones who view them strictly as you do and derive no pride or pleasure in the activity of driving itself.
The reason “we don’t get excited” is because there is very little in the vain of generic, simple, rules that we can *fairly* do to address the safety issues caused by the confluence of many different types of people, vehicles, and situations on the roads.
“Deliberately misuse” the machine is also really a misnomer. That’s a judgment call. Am I “deliberately misusing” my machine if I’m at 110 in the left hand lane on Deerfoot Tr. on a hot summer day in August — in a Corvette Z06? Technically, yes. Clearly… no.
By the same token, if I were to drive the same car at the same speed in the same place on a blizzard winter day, would I then be deliberately (unsafely) misusing it? Absolutely.
That’s why when I do get pulled over in my sports car on a summer day I thoroughly appreciate and respect the officers that “get it” and seem to only try to prevent people from doing real “deliberate misuse” on the roads. What boggles my mind is that even after doing the job for years there seem to be another brand of officers that don’t get it; and instead of trying to encourage good judgment, act like robots when it comes to law enforcement.
In my mind if you’re really passionate about actually increasing safety on the roads the only real solution is foundational — look at the traffic accident statistics in a country like Germany. Then ask someone there about their licensing and driver training programs. To be more clear; if you really want to make the roads safer, ultimately the best solution is to produce better drivers with better judgment and harshly filter out all the less capable drivers that I currently have to avoid on a daily basis.
Why don’t you write an article asking for harsher licensing requirements and better driver training? Or do you REALLY still think that we should “improve safety” by playing to the lowest common denominator and all driving at 30 everywhere?
Andrew.
It’s common thing nowadays - people don’t know the structure and basic princilpes of machines they operate, and there’s no need for it as they are users and all they have to do in order to operate machines is to know their user interface, and if it breaks, there’s always a technician who will fix it. It is not all about automobiles, computer and other office equipement go here as well. There’re specialists in narrow fields, they know everything about machines they specialize in, but can everyone know it?