Sad but true. In 2020, OSHA celebrates its 50th anniversary. Safety’s sage, Dan Petersen, published “Safety Management, a Human Approach” in 1975. Lessons haven’t been learned. 

"Safety for everyone” is the tagline of a 60-second Honda commercial you might have seen this fall. It tugs at the heart strings. A series of images is accompanied by voice-overs:

Google “safety culture” and you get about 1,600,000,000 results in 0.95 seconds. Safety and health managers have long known the importance of culture – the organization’s values, beliefs and leadership - on safety, morale, productivity, engagement, presenteeism and absenteeism. Culture has been at the top of safety and health issues for the past ten years at least.

We’re coming up on an anniversary: in 1970 Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed into the law the Occupational Safety and Health Act, creating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA.

Since 2014, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has set a goal, or more specifically a “vision,” that traffic deaths and injuries on city streets is, in his words, “not acceptable and… serious crashes will no longer (be regarded) as inevitable. We won’t accept this any longer.”

“Today we’re going to talk about something bigger than PPE, policies and practices. Something we’ve never discussed before. Can’t really fit it into a toolbox. It’s called life.

In 2017, 5,147 workers in the U.S. were killed on the job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, down slightly from 5.190 in 2016. The fatal injury rate in 2017 was 3.5 per 100,000 full-time employees. Three or four people out of 100,000. Not close to one percent. Meaning most everyone escapes being touched by a work-related death.