I have a confessions to make. I stick to the speed limit and in over 25 years of driving cars and riding motorcycles, I have never had a speeding ticket. That may make me sound like a grumpy old fart but I can’t see how it can be worth putting yourself and others at risk for little return….
A British coroner has reflected a common perception on occupational health and safety and how OHS is “taking all the fun out of life”.
According to an article in This Is The West Country on 11 June 2008, West Somerset Coroner Michael Rose said
“All too often, there isn’t enough challenge for people in this country – everything is under health and safety. I don’t think we’d have been the country we were if we’d have had health and safety one or two centuries ago.”
Without taking MIchael Rose to task about his knowledge of health and safety in 1808, his comments can be heard in many everyday circumstances where OHS is a bit of a wet blanket.
It is fun to have the wind through your hair while tearing down a hillside with no bike helmet on. It is fun to spin on a shopping trolley in the aisles of a supermarket. And it is exhilarating to stand on the top of a building, looking down with no safety harness. All of these things I have done and I suspect my children will do them too.
There is nothing to stop you doing these acts if you choose to. But if you are injured as a result, it would be unfair to exepct soemone else to pay for your stupidity. And yet that is what is becoming the expectations of modern western society – we do not take repsonsibility for our actions.
But then there is a time and place for everything and maybe OHS simply restricts those two elements.