Be Afraid!
There are undoubtedly thousands, perhaps millions, of products devoted simply to keeping us safe in our everyday lives. Everything from car airbags, safety rails, seat belts and guardrails all exist to make sure we don’t hurt or injure ourselves or the people we love. But shouldn’t we consider the actual things that we’re trying to defend ourselves from? Isn’t it worth considering the value of cars and industrial devices that we can be certain will lead to the deaths and maiming of hundreds each year?
This is a tough question to ask, because although we know these objects cause massive amount of damage to humans and animal life, we need to keep them both for our own convenience and to maintain the economy of western countries alive. Imagine if next week the Government made a law disallowing the use of motor vehicles. Obviously this would be a major inconvenience as many of us would have difficult getting to work, and train lines would be massively crowded.
But that’s not even considering the way cars (or any oil-powdered contraption) are so heavily required to keep our civilization moving. Consider that if we need to have food brought to cities from farms, it will need to be driven by trucks. If a house is burning, we would need a fire truck. In so many ways never normally considered, we’re reliant on the use of dangerous vehicles just to keep our bodies alive.
In the civilized world, we like to give ourselves a certain amount of distance from the realities of death. Such realities are, of course, still ever-present, but our ability to stay away from the fact that we could die at any moment are quite effective. The fear is still present, of course, but it tends to grow displaced in different concerns such as the fear of terrorism, shark attacks or criminal activity. When any of these is compared to the amount of damage caused by work accidents, or vehicle prangs, or diseases caused by smoking and drug use, the things we fear more are actually the reason for far less damage.
Imagine, for a moment, if we feared alcohol and cigarettes to the same extent we fear terrorism. Anyone claiming to support the use of beer or going to a pub would be shunned by their peers, those who claimed to enjoy smoking would be profiled by thier police, and anyone going down the street with a bottle of Jim Beam would be seen as a danger to national security. Of course, this is all a bit silly, but the statistical data show that the danger posed by these is more real by any threat we can see from terrorists. Fear is, by its very nature, irrational. If we can view the realities of our current situation, and what actual threats we may be victim to, we’ll be able to make alterations in our lives that can cause real improvements in the safety of ourselves and those around us.
Connor Sullivan recently researched the cost of installing safety rails and other safety protection items for his company. He installed guardrails on the upper level of his warehouse. This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.
categories: safety rails
