I posted an article today @ SAFTENG explaining his accident pyramid model and discussing some of his Domino model. This quote is his own words trying to use the lottery to explain his pyramid model. I think it is a very fitting analogy.
“The machine is dangerous as man makes it so. It is the use of the machine—more correctly, the abuse of it—that creates danger.
Nor is the appalling degree of man failure fully portrayed by its direct results in loss of life, limb, and dollars. Willful disregard of instructions, recklessness, violent temper, and lack of knowledge or training result in unsafe acts for many of which no penalties whatever are exacted in the form of personal injuries or property damage.
For example,
automobiles left unsafely parked on grades run wild through busy streets and crash into buildings, and no one is hurt.
Steelworkers “ride the ball” and are hoisted hundreds of feet into the air in the erection of skyscrapers, yet they do not always fall.
Guards on heavy machines are removed, men stand under suspended loads, get on and off moving vehicles, leave obstructions in walkway areas, pile material insecurely, refuse to wear goggles, gloves, masks, and other protective equipment, and yet injuries are relatively infrequent.
The situation reminds one of an honestly conducted lottery where most of the tickets fail to draw anything, whereas a certain fraction of them draws small prizes, and a still smaller fraction draws big ones. In the case of the lottery, however, the prizes are hoped for and desired, whereas in the accident situation the case is the reverse. It is hard to understand why those who have been in the habit of playing lotteries are so confident that the occasional event certainly will come to pass once in so often, whereas in the accident field, where the mathematical principles involved are so closely similar, men seem to feel an equal degree of confidence that the occasional event never will come to pass.”
Industrial Accident Prevention – A Scientific Approach, H. W. Heinrich, Assistant Superintendent Engineering and Inspection Division, The Travelers Insurance Company, 1941
