Level Crossings, Driver Behaviour and Politicians

Victoria has experienced several more level crossing incidents in late-March 2008. The significance of one of the recent incidents is that a vehicle driver survived, as happened with the Kerang incident which resulted in multiple fatalities. Curiously, the most recent survival also involved a vehicle colliding with the side of a train already on the railway crossing.

In this case there were no fatalities as the train was freight. But the driver’s comments are interesting. 59-year-old Laurie Heffernan was reported by AAP as admitting using the crossing, 1.5 kilometres from his residence, over 30,000 times and has recommended that freight trains have reflective strips on the sides and that engines should have flashing lights. The incident occurred on a misty morning at 7am.

On radio interviews, Heffernan has also blamed the layout of the road and rail crossing and the proximity of sheds that obscure part of the view of the crossing. This seems a peculiar excuse for someone who must use the crossing on a daily basis.

Yes, Heffernan was travelling slower than the speed limit. Yes, the collision was a glancing blow, but the collision still bounced him “back a bit and it spun me”. He says “If I’d have been travelling faster I probably would’ve gone under it… I would’ve done a lot worse, I mightn’t be talking with you right now.”

His responses, sadly, support the Victorian government’s push for increased driver awareness of level crossings.

The crossing, at Terang, has no flashing lights or boom gates but has recently had rumble strips installed. There was no indication whether Mr Heffernan noticed the rumble strips but he stated they are “useless”.

I have great respect for Victoria’s Transport Minister, Lynne Kosky, having met her before she became a parliamentarian, but her comments after this most recent incident are alarming and ill-advised

Her government established a parliamentary inquiry into level crossings as a result of an increase in incidents and fatalities. That inquiry has received many submissions and has had its timeline expanded to October 2008. The inquiry is not a court case so is not sub-judice but the Minister has knee-capped the inquiry by stating that various safety control measures are not needed or cannot be afforded for rural crossings. Her comments could make some of the legitimate findings of the inquiry look stupid. The inquiry cannot now recommend boom gates on every rail crossing. It is highly unlikely that grade separations could ever be seriously recommended.

How such an intelligent parliamentarian could place such limitations on the inquiry, or her advisers let her say such things, is very surprising. In this circumstance politician-speak of “let’s wait and hear what the rail safety experts in the parliamentary inquiry will say when they report to Parliament in October” would have been appropriate.

Kosky is forever going to have to explain to the families of victims of rail incidents why one particular rail crossing had less control measures than another crossing down the track. If she had applied the political nous that I know she has, she would have increased the validity of the parliamentary inquiry that her own Labor Government established.

As it is she has shown that it is not only America that has politicians who resemble Tonya Harding.

Is health promotion a workplace safety matter?

I have undertaken work for companies that promote wellness and good health in workplaces.  The companies provide health assessments for a range of conditions, health advice, fitness services and assessments, and a redesigned staff canteen for healthier food.  All of these initiatives are worthwhile but they have not been embraced by the wider workplace safety sector.

Part of this reason is that OHS professionals focus on the hazards to workers that are generated by the workplace or the work undertaken.  Getting fat is not necessarily a workplace hazard although recent evidence in the United Kingdom shows that a sedentary occupation, for instance sitting in front of VDU, can lead to obesity. (Any parent with a teenage boy and a games console would already know the link).  OHS tends to focus on the controllable hazards that are generated by the workplace, such as amputations, dust, noise, manual handling, forklifts, falling, etc.  

It has only just begun to deal with psychosocial hazards of fatigue, bullying, violence and stress. These hazards have been given high priority because they have a high workers’ compensation cost and have a negative flow-on to other workers and the organisation in general. But how have obesity, diabetes and cholesterol become workplace hazards? 

This seems to be the position put forward by the Victorian Government with its launch of its WorkHealth strategy.  It has allocated $A600 million over five years to tackle these new workplace hazards that until last week were being handled by the public health boffins and health promoters in the Department of Human Services. 

Geoff Fary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions told me last week that the ACTU supports wellness initiatives that identify and prevent disease but is more comfortable with work-related disease than non-work-related diseases that may affect work performance.  He also stated that wellness initiatives should never be considered as substitutes for a “rigorous OHS regime”.

There are many questions about the actual funding of the program. Is the $A600 million from surplus workers’ compensation premiums, or is it from the interest generated from the WorkCover funds?  Who initiated this program given that the Victorian WorkCover Authority or the health promotion authorities gave no hint of its development?  Is it a folly of some senior bureaucrat?  Is it an ill-conceived way of blending public health and workplace health initiatives? 

What can be said is that the wellness industry is jumping up and down in anticipation of a government-backed opening of a new front in the fight against obesity.  But why divert attention from the successful community campaign the government has run on workplace safety over the last 10 years?  Why confuse the message by now making obesity an occupational hazard?  

Wellness programs improve the general health of the community with the secondary benefit that good personal health leads to a healthier and more productive workforce.  This established perspective has now been switched by the Victorian government. 

As well as making sure that workers go home alive, business will now have to send them home thin.  At least thin commuters take up less room on the overcrowded public transport.

OHS Frustrations and Lobbying

There is a minor professional debate developing amongst Australian safety practitioners on whether occupational health and safety should sit under a government’s industrial relations portfolio or health. In Australia it is in industrial relations, the US has it under the Centre for Disease Control and NIOSH, the UK has OHS more under IR than elsewhere but it has at least expanded OHS to include biological hazards.

It is refreshing to have a debate occurring over an arrangement or concept that has existed for over 40 years. Traditional ways of doing everything regularly need to be challenged or questioned in order to achieve improvement. But I am not sure about one OHS academic’s call to swap government departments, particularly as a State health department is being investigated over the deaths of five residents in an aged care facility from food poisoning. I don’t see what could be gained by the switch except that real injury data could be collected and that a scientific rigour be applied to OHS research. I am not convinced that this is enough reason to swap.

The state of health research funding and resources is better than under industrial relations but only just, and OHS would then be competing in a more cluttered field of researchers. Much of the suggestion in the press and in talking with colleagues hints at a strategic retreat. Sometimes I perceive a professional fatigue with the slow pace of change. Part of the reason is that until late in 2007 Australia had the same Prime Minister, John Howard, and political philosophy for over 12 years, far too long for any political reign in my opinion. And the government has not been interested in occupational health and safety one bit. No initiatives of the Howard government have improved workplace safety and, indeed, I would say that the industrial relations initiatives (revolution) have severely weakened the OHS consultative frameworks in companies, and the prominence of OHS (such as it was) that existed in the community.

The government argues that injury rates are decreasing and they are, but the way of measuring such statistics has been flawed for decades. It was the unwillingness to do anything about this point that generated some of the calls to switch OHS jurisdictions. The switch suggestion is, I think, an acknowledgement that the safety professionals and practitioners are not prepared to use political means to achieve the aim of an accurate picture of the state of OHS in Australia and of establishing a mechanism for improvement. There are no OHS lobbyists. The difficult industrial relations fights of the unions have removed any OHS context from their agenda. Safety professionals are afraid of making political statements, regardless how sound they may be.

Yes there is very little funding of research in Australia on OHS matters but that does not mean you move to a different arena. Generate research funding independently. Shame the government into action through comparisons with other countries. Campaign on how government neglect is exposing Australians to unnecessary injuries and deaths. Lobby the ministers, meet them for coffee, bump into them on the golf course. Show the government how investment in OHS can increase the productivity of the workers in the same way we advise our clients. If we tell our customers that investing in safety will reduce insurance costs, can’t we make the same case in relation to social security costs and workplace safety?

The worst thing that can be done is to attempt to start again somewhere else and although not a lot has happened in the past, it is in industrial relations where OHS has its strongest presence, its strongest links and its strongest moral heritage. OHS professionals and practitioners need to think outside the square not move outside it.

Originally posted on 8 January 2008

Rape of Nurse Working Alone North of Australia

On February 5 2008, a nurse was raped in her residence on Mabuiag Island in the Torres Straits islands group north of Australia. She was the only health officer on the island and had been posted there only a few moths earlier. A 22-year-old man has been arrested and charged with burglary and rape.

The Queensland Nurses Union has called for an urgent increase in the safety and security of remote area nurses. As the case gains media attention, other registered nurses have come out with their tales of earlier assaults.

An assessment report was presented to the Queensland Parliament on March 12 (it will be available for download shortly at www.parliament.qld.gov.au ) which provides a very interesting insight to how safety hazards have been assessed. It was conducted by two security representatives of the Townsville Hospital Security Service on behalf of the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area Health Service District. The report found

The security risk assessment identified many areas that need to be addressed to reduce the very high exposure to risk that staff are currently facing.

The assessment was conducted in line with the Australian risk management standard, took photos of the hazards, allocated a risk weighting and recommended control measures. They also looked beyond the immediate hazards and examined maintenance services. Not all the recommendations I would agree with, but I have never been to the Torres Strait Islands. For instance, a panic room is an effective control measure but one can’t remain in them for long and the isolation in a threatening situation is not something that should be tolerated. But the panic room was just one of many options recommended.

The assessment report is like looking at one’s one risk assessment reports. It provides a useful indication of the quality of reports expected in the region and that industry. It also indicates how good advice can be given if the right people have the right skills and use criteria from valid sources.

There is a substantial political hoo-ha in Queensland at the moment over the responsibilities and obligations of the Queensland Health Department. This has expanded to questions about the levels of funding made available to the health services. The issue is likely to become mired in the political process of reviews and recriminations.

What must be remembered is that an employee was placed in a working environment that proved to be unsafe and that worker suffered serious harm. The Torres Strait Risk Assessment report listed the following hazards of the Mabuiag island health centre:

1. External lighting is inoperable and inappropriate fixtures fitted
2. Security screening is poorly maintained and allows no escape in event of fire as they are fixed to windows.
3. Security screening has been placed over insect screens and not over glass window which can be easily broken
4. Security duress system is installed but failed
5. Doors and locks are poorly maintained and have either failed or are failing.
6. There is no emergency lighting
7. There is no exit strategy for staff
8. In the event of an incident there are considerable delays in organising support. Most incidents will not have support until after the event
9. Fire system installed is inadequate for building (household detectors used). The fixtures have been removed because they false alarm due to lack of maintenance.
10. No planned maintenance on existing security systems or for failed/compromised locks etc
11. Staff are not trained in aggressive behaviour management
12. No security cameras
13. Staff accommodation has inoperable security system
14. Poor lighting
15. Emergency generator in poor condition
16. Waiting area with broken glass louvers
17. There are no procedures for responding to fire/aggression/exit strategy
18. Only one phone line in and out which gets bogged down, alternative CDMA communications not reliable.
19. No secure storage space

These are not difficult hazards to fix but they caused a considerable and unnecessary injuries to a young nurse.

Australian Level Crossings – Part 1

Victoria has had some horrific rail level crossing incidents in the last 2 years. Rural incidents have resulted in multiple fatalities and derailments, urban incidents are usually single vehicles or rushing pedestrians.

The State Government has instigated a Parliamentary Inquiry into level crossing incidents. Submissions have been received and the final report is expected at the end of 2008. For the next couple of SafetyAtWork blogs I am going to look at some of the submissions from an OHS perspective and in terms of grade separations, the most effective control measure for level crossings.

A Chapter of the Institute of Engineers, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia (RTSA), states that there are three “immutable facts about level crossings”:

• Road and rail traffic will increase “with the increase in our population and industry”
• The traffic will need to travel faster because of “the pressure of time on our lifestyle”, and
• “There will be an increasing number of road and rail crossings required for our increasing population”.

It seems peculiar that the motivation for increased risk at existing level crossings is population growth and lifestyle pressures. The increasing traffic volumes and speed of road and rail transport provide a strong reason for grade separation and it is a long bow to blame an increasing number of level crossings on population growth. If the argument is that new housing developments are required due to population growth and that these developments may be traversed by railway lines then could not developers promote the safe community aspects of their new suburbs by providing bridges and tunnels? Indeed, why would a developer allow pedestrian access to, and road transport near, level crossings given the well-documented tragedies that the overlap can result in?

On that same page the RTSA acknowledges that the Victorian Government has stated that no new level crossings will be built. The Engineers acknowledge that in urban areas “there may be adequate justification for the policy”. Well doesn’t this erase the third bullet point above?

The RTSA calls the absolute policy against level crossings in rural areas “naive and smacks of a typical knee jerk reaction”. They have interpreted the policy as meaning grade separations for rural level crossings as well as urban areas and this may be correct, but it is highly unlikely that such a control measure can be justified on the basis of risk when there are a range of second-tier control measures available. The flaw in the RTSA submission, as with many others, is that it makes assumptions about the cost of grade separation and guesses the political strategy. Yes, grade separations are an expensive option (and the most effective) and over the last 20 years in Victoria the government has established alternative infrastructure revenue sources in Private-Public Partnerships. There are alternate funding models that may make grade separations viable.

It should not be the role of a submission to a parliamentary inquiry to anticipate political challenges but to make recommendations based on the technical resources in the professional area of expertise.

The submissions to the parliamentary inquiry are available for download at http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/rsc/Crossings/submissions.html

A full article on level crossings will be in an upcoming edition of Safety At Work magazine

OHS and Climate Change

Many of my OHS colleagues have responsibility for environmental safety, some to the extent of being rebadged HSE or OHSE. I have been an ardent advocate of managing business safety and risk issues in a coordinated and integrated manner. Historically, I would have applied the risk management standard as the umbrella framework, others do not.

The balancing act for health, safety & environment managers is to consider a vast array of matters without losing the focus of the core task, in my case workplace safety, for others this may be public liability, or triple-bottom-lines etc. Depending on the industry you work in, environment can have a greater or smaller role in your business.

I remember working on safety management for a transport company where I reported to the quality manager. I can report to lots of different titles but in this case the quality manager allocated an uneven priority to safety compared to other business elements. He saw quality as by-far the most important element, perhaps it was because he was uncomfortable in other areas outside of his expertise, I don’t really know. But his attitude did not allow for integration only sublimation. I remember his attitude when I have to consider elements beyond my expertise and have them fit into the business strategy in which I have responsibility for safety or maybe risk.

Time management and the prioritizing of tasks is never far away from occupational safety and business operations. It is important that environmental impacts of your business, and those on your business, are discussed in a serious manner at all levels of your company. If it is not on the agenda, it is not in people’s minds. Indeed some have said that the environment is the new OHS. I am not so sure as environmental issues have a global impact where OHS is limited to a smaller community.
In the context of community, an important consideration is whether the implementation of environmental strategies will re-organise business structures to the extent that there are staff losses. In a relatively small nation like Australia, if the environmental management trend continues to grow at the same time, the social impact from unemployment could be significant. However similar concerns have been voiced in recent memory over the level of automation in workplaces and the impact of automatic teller machines on the banking sector. In a fairly short amount of time, the workforce is redistributed to areas of need but for the unemployed and their families this short period can be very painful.

I was taught that risk management can be a major force for good by tying important business elements under the one, fairly broad, set of criteria. When I entered the real world of risk management I encountered as much narrow-mindedness in the risk management profession as I had seen elsewhere. I hope that as the environmental business issues gain prominence that the other disciplines listen, consider and, maybe, embrace the environmental so that all the important elements in our lives and our businesses are weighed, balanced and integrated. Work/life balance is far more than just hours of work and time with the kids.

Is OHS a Joke?

Recently, occupational health and safety (OHS) has been given a “bad press” in the electronic media in Australia with many examples of how an activity or behaviour has been stopped or excluded on the “unreasonable” grounds of OHS.
Recently in my local supermarket I asked a worker in the vegetable section whether the store had loose leafed baby spinach. He responded that they only have packaged spinach. On asking why I was told that it was because of OHS requirements. I contacted an OHS representative within the supermarket’s head office who told me this was not the case. He told me that the packaged option was more likely to be on the grounds of food safety and hygiene.

his example highlights a major challenge to OHS managers and organisations. WorkSafe and unions have been very successful over the last decade in raising the community awareness to issues of workplace safety, to the extent that OHS has a higher profile than the issues that the supermarket and others are applying.
Food safety and hygiene has been revolutionised with the introduction of HACCP, the legislative requirements for food preparation. Public liability has increased for school excursions, council garden maintenance, small business, retail outlets and everywhere else it seems. These two issues are being misunderstood as workplace safety matters because OHS has a higher general prominence. HACCP requirements are only relevant to the food industry and impinge on the public, usually, only when we ask for a doggy bag. Public liability is a cost to business and councils but doesn’t affect the public unless someone suggests that you take action after tripping on a cracked footpath.

In Victoria in 2007 there were four workplace fatalities in ten days. According to WorkSafe:

• On April 19, a truck driver died when his tip truck hits power lines on a farm near Nhill while making a delivery.
• On April 20, a man died after being crushed between the hydraulically operated door of a machine and a rail earlier on 13 April.
• On April 22, a man died after suffering an electric shock while changing light bulbs at Coburg North car yard on 18 April.
• On April 23, a man died on a property near Wodonga when a tree he was cutting down with a chain saw fell and hit him.

The whole aim of OHS management and legislative obligations is to avoid death and injury. As we move to the international day of mourning for those who die at work, in late April, we need to remember that safety should always be seen in the context of its relation to people. People should not be sacrificed for profit or corporate peace of mind.