OT: Kids driving legalities?

You're new to this sort of thing aren't you...

'Risk' isn't actually about 'risk', it's about blame, and the one set of people who must never be blamed are the people writing H&S policy...

Presumably the line was drawn at "agricultural machinery" because there were a large number of incidents involving young children, not necessarily involving driving.

How would Louis Hamilton have felt about not being able to play on powered vehicles in his childhood?

AJH

Sorry I'm not one of those workplace safety officers or profesional advisors who work as you suggest. I live and work in the real world where you manage the risks for yourself and others, get it right and avoid injury to others and balme isn't an issue.

What sort of world do you live and work in?

I live in the UK of today.

UK 'Health and Safety' legislation isn't actually about health and safety, it's about apportioning blame.

It's a dreadful situation, but, unless you'd like to get elected and change things, it's the situation we have to live with.

Complete and utter bollocks.

Come back when you know a little of what you are talking about.

Have a nice day...

You're dismissed.

Piss off now, there's a good chap.

Am I allowed to disagree politely?

In which case........

absolute testicles ;)

I also live in the UK of today H&S is about safety. The low-life ambulance chasing lawyers are about apportioning blame in order to line their own pockets ;(

On or around Sun, 9 Mar 2008 16:48:30 -0000, "William Black" enlightened us thusly:

hey, now, play nicely, chaps. Rich B has worked in the field, so chances are he does know a bit about it.

OK, I'll make it simpler.

In what way - and feel free to be very, very precise - is H&S legislation (1) *not* about health and safety and (2) about apportioning blame?

Direct quotations from HSWA 1974 and Management Regs of 1999 will get you extra marks. Quotations from the Dail Mail or Sun on "Yet More Health And Safety Madness" will not.

:-)

Indeed.

Did he wear the right PPE ? Enquiring minds want to know.

Steve

On or around Sun, 9 Mar 2008 22:19:48 -0000, "Rich B" enlightened us thusly:

and certain low-life newspapers delight in stories about HSE banning the playing of conkers in school, which didn't happen. HSE has a web-page devoted to such myths, makes quite good reading.

"Austin Shackles" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I have as well.

I've even written policy.

I know what I'm talking about.

Because nobody ever got prosecuted for breaking the rules (or not even having a safety policy) unless there was an accident.

If you don't have an accident nobody cares, if you do then someone gets the blame.

The whole system of accreditation and authorisation is geared towards sending the 'blame' downwards.

People are now responsible for their own actions, and as long as the management system can reasonably claim 'They've been trained, they knew what to do, it's not our fault' the bosses don't get blamed and don't go to jail, and the employees can often claim that 'We got the training but we didn't get time to implement it'.

At one establishment I worked at they had a plan but did nothing about it because there was no funding. legal advice was sought...

"Well, you'll be ok as long as you're doing something, just have some paper going around and nobody will mind if there's an accident."

It's not about accidents, it's about blame.

Myth: Toy 'weapons' in a play had to be locked-up and registered with the police.

Myth: If a pupil is hurt, the teacher is likely to be sued

Myth: Workers banned from putting up decorations

Myth: Children were banned from riding at a donkey derby

Myth: Kids must wear goggles to play conkers

.. and so on, a myth per month it seems.

Another slightly unrelated one I've seen recently is that one about the "Bully" video game from Rockstar, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, which apparently encourages people to profit from bullying, whereas the reviews of the game (I've not played it) have said that the bullies are a gang in the game that must be defeated, and heavy penalties are dished out to players who beat up other kids, girls, teachers etc.

A lot of this comes, I think, from people who see all the stuff about assessing safety. and don't have a context for it. Safety goggles to play conkers is a good example: there is a risk there, so considering eye protection fits with all the guidelines, but the correct answer takes into account the materials involved (large fragments of vegetable matter rather than fragments of steel), how fast they'd move, and the general exposure time.

Now, look at how many places insist on safety helmets, even for staff working in the middle of a field. The plus point is that people remember to wear them in the dangerous places, but it supports the HSE myth of senseless rules.

And then there is the problem of how the context develops as new rules are promulgated. About 20 years ago, people had to start getting a formal qualification in applying pesticides. It was tied in with COSHH and fairly new HSE rules.

It took several years for people to fully accept that the COSHH side was mostly the same as asking, "Does this pesticide work on the problem?"

And one rule on clothing was, at least initially, interpreted as meaning white overalls. You know, a bit like the GM Crops protestors look. Of course that made people nervous, but by the time I did my course, the instructor knew that the regulations said "light coloured", and the reason was so that it was easy to see splashes and spills darkeing the fabric. You didn't want default dark blue, or ex-MoD green.

Of course the HSE doesn't want to admit that their rules can be interpreted to support some of these myths.

Well, their myths website does make it plain that rules are only there to be used when appropriate, so they do acknowledge that people are mis-interpreting the rules in an over-zealous fashion, but there's nothing they can do about that other than waste huge amounts of time trying to be hair-tearingly specific rather than relying on sense. Most of the time sense prevails but of course we hear about the times when people do stupid things and blame HSE, the Human Rights Act and data protection legislation so the legislation gets the blame for the occasional idiocy of those implementing it, and those few cases are seen as the norm.