The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 4 (September 1, 1931.)

Safety Education

Safety Education

The Human Element.

Intelligence never exposes itself to undue or unnecessary physical risks, stupidity exposes itself—and pays the price. That, I think, is a brief summation of the reason back of safety education.

It is the part of intelligence to inculcate and foster a wholesome, reasoned, and controlled fear. Appreciation of risk and avoidance of exposure to risk are the part of the intelligent man. Time may have been when absolute fearlessness and blindness to danger were necessary. That must have been when man met blind and unknown dangers.

In this mechanical day such intrepidity is the part of stupidity. Hazards are largely predictable in the case of machine workers. The intelligent worker will, then, face the hazards, give them the thought, the caution, the fear that they merit and set his intelligence to the task of avoiding every possible risk. He will foster in every way his own training for safety, the safety of himself and of others.

Mechanical devices have been invented always with the idea of giving advantages to the intelligent—the intelligent, not the heedlessly brave.

Influences Reaction.

This is, perhaps, but one of the major changes in emotional pattern that the new education demands of us. Attitude, emotional set, undoubtedly influences our reactions to new training. There is, for example, the man who venerates precedent. His father was a good engineer, let us say, and he sees no need for improvement upon methods used in his father's day. This without consideration of the fact that engines and traffic conditions have changed mightily since his father's day.

Precedent is an excellent thing and worthy of consideration, but if it is antedated it may become an unsafe guide. Because an expedient has served for twenty years or thirty years does not prove its worth if conditions to-day are not what they were in the past. This sort of close-mindedness is the enemy to safety training. It is not intelligent; it does not evaluate risks.

Here a word may be apropos about the worker's prevalent distrust of the “armchair critic,” the laboratory worker, the dealer in theories. This is natural. The man who does, feels superior to the man who thinks or talks. But, if it is natural it is also dangerous.

Advancement always begins as an idea, a theory. The theory may be the outcome of actual work—often is. But it may be the outcome of abstract thinking. At any rate, scorn and incredulity are not always intelligent. They may blind one to risks and to opportunities. The “smart guy who knows nothing about the job of the engineer” may possibly see some phase of that job which is lost to the man actually busy at its performance.

Safety is Re-education.

Safety education is re-education to those who are already trained and on the job, and re-education is a most difficult undertaking. Not only is it hard to shed old habits; it is hard even to want to shed them.

But that is the road of progress. We lay down the good to advance to the better. Mechanical ability has been on a high level for the past decade or two. But the increased complexity of life demands that it become still higher.—J. U. Yarborough Ph.D., in the Santa Fe Railways Magazine.)

Christchurch Railway Porters' Club, 1931 Photo. Coronation Studio, Christchurch.) Back row: L. V. Etwell, M. Fleming, D. O. Buck, A. Bruce. Third row: C. F. Thomas, E. Collie, E. Calvert, V. C. Willyams, C. A. Chapman, I. Dey, G. R. Anderson. Second row: A. Hutchison (Chairman 1928), G. A. Anderson, F. Anderson, W. Etwell, F. Schroder, A. Horneman, R. Aspray, C. S. Lewin (Chairman 1930). Front row: T. Robertson (Chairman 1929), H. L. Boot (Treasurer), J. Joyce (Vice-Chairman), H. J. Cooper (Chairman), A. G. Saunders (Hon. Sec.), A. G. Finlayson (Hon. Sec. 1928–30), S. Warren (Chairman 1927). Absent: 22 members.

Christchurch Railway Porters' Club, 1931
Photo. Coronation Studio, Christchurch.)
Back row: L. V. Etwell, M. Fleming, D. O. Buck, A. Bruce. Third row: C. F. Thomas, E. Collie, E. Calvert, V. C. Willyams, C. A. Chapman, I. Dey, G. R. Anderson. Second row: A. Hutchison (Chairman 1928), G. A. Anderson, F. Anderson, W. Etwell, F. Schroder, A. Horneman, R. Aspray, C. S. Lewin (Chairman 1930). Front row: T. Robertson (Chairman 1929), H. L. Boot (Treasurer), J. Joyce (Vice-Chairman), H. J. Cooper (Chairman), A. G. Saunders (Hon. Sec.), A. G. Finlayson (Hon. Sec. 1928–30), S. Warren (Chairman 1927). Absent: 22 members.

“Personal Luggage”

The sack of flour, the baby elephant, the parrot in the cage and the performing seal have all at one time or another been classified as “personal luggage,” but this ubiquitous term has never been applied more freely than in its recent extension to include motor cars. Yet it is reported that last year's innovation of the German Railway Company on the Hamburg or Bremen to Basle or Munich routes, for transporting passengers' motor cars as “personal luggage,” but at half ordinary luggage rates, has now been extended to seven other lines. In England the same principle is proving successful, as car owners are discovering that it is better to get out of the centres by rail—thus avoiding road congestion—and to commence from a country station their road tour through the more beautiful unfrequented places.