Safety is Not One Big Thing…

Wear steel tipped boots with rubberized soles. Lift with your legs and not your back or arms. Wear a reflective safety vest when working beside traffic. Look both ways before crossing the street. Wear a helmet. Don’t step out of a moving vehicle. Keep three points of contact when climbing a ladder. Don’t leave tools lying around; put them away.

Safety is not one big thing…it’s a lot of little things. They all add up. In many cases, it’s simple common sense. Things we learned when we were children.

When it comes to operating and maintaining major modern highway, bridge and tunnel facilities, safety is a LOT of little things – hundreds, even thousands of little things – that add up to many BIG things. This is what IBTTA’s summit on Incident Management, Safety and Security July 19-21 in Denver is all about.

More than twenty years ago, I listened to a radio program in which the host was interviewing U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski. This was during the age of arbitrage, leveraged buyouts, and corporate takeovers. When it was fashionable to flip an ailing company into a quick pile of cash. The radio host asked calmly, “What’s going on? Why are all of these takeovers happening now?” I will never forget Senator Mikulski’s response: “We have lost the ability to do the ordinary with enthusiasm,” she said. “Everyone wants to buy an airline, but nobody wants to maintain the planes. Everyone wants to cut the big deal, but nobody wants to do the hard work that follows.”

Doing the ordinary with enthusiasm is what incident management, safety and security are all about. Doing the ordinary with enthusiasm saves lives. Doing the ordinary with enthusiasm can help turn a potentially tragic situation – like a washed out bridge or downed power line – into a minor inconvenience that simply costs time but not lives.

On July 19-21, 2009, transportation experts from all over the world will come together to share their experiences on what it means to do the ordinary with enthusiasm. A recent comprehensive study demonstrates that toll facilities in the United States have a much lower fatality rate than do U.S. roads overall and lower fatality rates than both urban and rural interstate highways. The experts in Denver will share with you the practices they use to make toll facilities the safest roads around. Don’t miss it. Learn more about Denver 2009 here.

-- Pat Jones