‘Those who wished to stand straight
always risked to fall’. Hazards are associated with every activity and each
hazard has its own element of risk. Risk is the composite of likelihood and
predicted severity for any potential hazard in its worst credible system state.
There is no word called absolute Safety.
Safety is nothing but the management
of risk by which possibility of harm or the damage for any potential hazard is
reduced to be below an acceptable level. Such acceptable level is different for
each of us and we tend to name it as our risk tolerability. In assessment of an
activity, we first identify the hazards, then assess the risk with each hazard
and then in comparison to our risk tolerability we choose to say whether such
activity is acceptable or not acceptable. There is but that third category
where the assessed risk is so close to our tolerability that we tend to say
Yes, No, Yes about its acceptance. This is where our chances of meeting the
harm is much more. We tend to mitigate the risk and to that premise we accept
the activity and then sometime our mitigation is seen deficient.
Mobility is one essential aspect in
human survival, be that social survival, professional survival or just the
survival for the sake of survival. We need to move and move faster to catch
with the pace of life. Each time we sped up on the accelerator of the car, we
know we are boosting up its momentum, its Kinetic energy and then if this car
was to collide with anything the exchange of energy in that accident will be
phenomenal, so the damage. Accident between two bullock carts may have had
similar probability of occurrence as with modern cars but their severity of
damage was negligible, so was the risk minimal. Modern cars on the roads today
have risks that scales high and hence the thought ‘Road safety’.
Crossing a road was an usual activity
in my childhood, I don’t teach my children this today as the risk involved is
so much that it cannot be effectively mitigated. This is prevention for an
activity by refusing the activity.
Follow on the traffic signs, follow
the speed limits, seat belts while driving or just focused attention when on
wheels are the measures which increase our safety margins whereby our
tolerability is higher to the involved risk.
Then there is that example of one
night when we were to pick up a friend from the airport, we are already late,
flight has landed, its raining and pouring and our car wipers aren’t working.
We took that risk of driving fast without wipers on a rainy night thinking we
might just be able to manage the risk. That evening we weren’t that lucky and
…….
Road safety is a subjective term but
it need be evaluated in our individual context and environment. What is safe
for someone is not necessarily safe for us.
Sustaining our desired mobility is a
task which has as many challenges as possibly the solutions. Good technological
solutions in cars, good lit roads, better infrastructure and if only all this
meets our better understanding of the concept of safety we can sustain the
mobility and still be safe.
Safety is not an accident, it is not
accidentally encountered it needs to be built into our activities by our
discipline and our objective assessments. It further needs be sustained, or
assured for all we do, whenever we do. Safety may just be a habit that we learn
not to be unsafe.
Better be Safe than be
Sorry.
Marble Malhotra Pushkarna
M/O Anannya Pushkarna
VII-A
Entry from our online competition
