Despite the
introduction of a raft of construction related health & safety legislation over the last 30 years,
there still remains an unacceptable amount of fatalities, serious injuries and
avoidable accidents and injuries within the UK construction industry
Just before
Christmas I published an article which proved incredibly popular (Link) that
highlighted the huge risk some are prepared to take when undertaking construction/maintenance
works, with little to no consideration of their own
health & safety. The article identified that the UK construction industry
is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the World and although
statistics show that improvements have been made in recent years, it is clear
from the latest Health & Safety Statistics (HSE) statistics that there
remains room for significant improvements:
‘There have been significant reductions in the
number and rate of injury over the last 20 years or more. Nevertheless,
construction remains a high risk industry. Although it accounts for only about
5% of the employees in Britain it accounts for 27% of fatal injuries to employees
and 10% of reported major injuries.
Despite the introduction
of a raft of construction related health & safety legislation, there still
remains an unacceptable amount of fatalities, serious injuries and avoidable accidents and injuries within the UK construction industry. The previous article made
reference to the ‘human factor’ which seems to be a inbuilt self destruct mechanism
whereby we as human beings think we can expose ourselves to whatever risk we
want because we are invincible! Sadly, this is not the case as statistics prove
otherwise.
Below I offer some
further images, which are widely available on-line, and provide some shocking
examples of how little some people value their lives and how they are prepared
to accept high levels of risk, by cutting corners. The images are taken from all over the World,
not just the UK. Just like the first article, when you look at the
images below I am sure you will ask yourself, ‘what was going on in that person’s
head at the time’, a question that these people obviously failed to ask
themselves:
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| Source:http://www.outsource-safety.co.uk |
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Gary,
ReplyDeleteThanks once again for another eye catching and interesting topic. I think one of the reasons why people tend to overlook when it comes to safety issues is the era of price price-work. With the need to get more done within a certain space of time, tradesmen tend to think more about the money than the negative impact of their actions regardless.
Health and safety issues are the mantle for all but not just tradesmen but mostly domestic clients don't care a hoot about how tradesmen do their works.
I think more reliance on output rather than input is killing the industry on health and safety issues and until some of these change, we'll continue to debate on health and safety statistics.
Richard Boateng
Coventry University