People Don’t Always Listen by Safety Speaker John Drebinger

As a safety speaker you wish everything went as well as possible, but sometimes it doesn’t. I pull into the gas station  to fill up before I head out for the day. As I am pumping my gas, a car pulls up behind me. The driver gets out leaving his wife and infant child in the car. It was a hot central valley California day. I notice he has left the car running.

I walk over and ask him if he would like a safety tip. He immediately responds by informing me, “I’m trained in low-level explosives and high-level explosives.” (His words) “I am also hazmat trained and there is little chance of the gas igniting.”

I smiled and went back to my gas pump. It made me realize before most incidents and injuries someone made a risk assessment but maybe not the best one. I’m sure he was confident he wouldn’t spill any gas that could run under his running engine. On the other hand, I might have been an absent-minded driver who pulled out without disconnecting the gas pump. Perhaps that is when the safety devices on the pump fail and a stream of gas flows under his car trapping his wife and infant child in a burning vehicle.

It seemed to me we need to remind people that safety procedures and policies are created to protect us even in worst-case scenarios. No one chooses a defective tool to break apart and cause sharp objects to fly into their eyes. We wear safety glasses to protect against the rare and unusual.

I suppose I believed the risk to be minimal as I didn’t go as far as notifying the gas station management or hitting the emergency shut off valve. Fortunately, it all worked out well. I did feel good that I cared enough to at least share safety. Sometimes we must do our best.