Brother Joe's Gun-Buying Advice

And here I thought he was out to ban guns...

Hang up and drive...

I am not a real big fan of government programs.  

However, the UK's "Think" campaign, which encourages driver safety... generally through graphic videos where lots of people die in dramatic fashion... is exceptionally effective at getting their message out in a memorable manner.  

Here in the US it is apparently too controversial to show dramatized versions of what happens every day on our highways, and kills over 40,000 people a year.  

On the lighter side, Think! has produced a driving safety challenge (link here) where you see how well you can divide your attention between pedestrians on the road and a cell phone conversation.  The pass rate is 19%.  I failed miserably.  Good luck.  

Safety Program or a Safe Program?

The point at which your safety program becomes irrelevant

There is a huge difference between having a safety program and operating safely.  The difference can mean life or death.  A few examples:

1. September 18th, 2008.  An Army National Guard helicopter crosses from Kuwait into southern Iraq for the first time since arriving in country for a nine month tour.  The organization at all levels has school trained safety officers, trained at the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, which believes (and practices) that enough micromanagement can achieve a zero accident rate in the Army.  There are safety conferences, safety meetings, safety councils, safety surveys, safety briefings, risk assessments, and safety is preached and drilled constantly during a months-long train up for the deployment.

But that evening, it doesn't matter, as inexperienced pilots take off in marginal weather into the dark featureless desert. Within minutes after crossing into country, the third aircraft in the formation, Red River 44, crashes into the desert floor at 130 knots, killing the crew and passengers.

2. April 20th, 2010.  BP has a great safety program, if not a great safety record.  Contract employees are subject to intensive interviews before being allowed to work for BP.  Many of these third party providers fail to live up to BP's safety standards.  New arrivals at BP facilities are shaken down for contraband.  Passengers must be escorted by approved escort personnel to aircraft that are shut down, no hot refueling, no hot passenger loading.  Safety is practiced well past the point of operational intrusion.  There are safety audits and safety consultants and safety inspections and safety meetings and long safety conventions, and awards and accolades given to the safest of the safe operators.

But that evening, it doesn't matter, as the Deepwater Horizon crew, recipients of a recent safety award, bypass all manner of established protocols downhole and cause a blowout that kills 11, and an epic oil spill that the domestic offshore drilling industry will take years to recover from.

3. Ongoing.  A major provider of worldwide offshore helicopter services hosts an expanding safety department that issues frequent safety alerts on such imperative workplace dangers as:

a. People walking into trailer hitches in the parking lot at company headquarters.
b. People walking into filing cabinets at company headquarters.
c. People injuring themselves standing up from chairs at company headquarters.

4. Have you taken a state approved Defensive Driving Course lately?  Enough said.

It is a given that people will often brush safety concerns aside in favor of getting the job done, absent any controls.  It is also a given that safety programs are often born out of industrial accidents, that the rules are written in blood, and that THE PROGRAM IS PUT IN PLACE LARGELY TO COVER MANAGEMENT'S REAR END AFTER AN ACCIDENT.  Later, the overly restrictive new programs are at least partially ignored on the line, and the process repeats itself, sometimes at the cost of many lives.

So what exactly can be done?  How can a safety program be engineered so that it actually makes a difference and a meaningful connection between the program and the employees?  A few ideas from the field:

1. The safety department must be trusted and respected both up and down.  Safety must report directly to top management so as to minimize political interference, and personnel on the line must be able to bring their concerns to the safety department where they will be given a fair hearing, without fear of retribution.  The moment that the line perceives that the safety department is blowing off their concerns, or worse, is a hit man for management, the safety department will have forever lost the cooperation of the line.  Moreover, if the line is engaged in operating, maintaining, and fueling aircraft in harsh conditions worldwide and your safety department is primarily focused on office hazards... your safety program has become a JOKE.

2. The safety department needs to be out in the field.  Often the best thing that safety personnel can do is push back from the desk and get out in the field to beat the bushes for potential problems.  Not with a checklist and a charter to document the sins of the field, but to talk to people and to understand that they alone do not understand the whole picture.  They might be surprised to find out that they can learn more in one afternoon of walking around than they would on several out of state safety conferences where they hobnob with equally clueless safety program managers from across the industry.

3. Standards must be enforced.  Much as I hate to admit it, the proliferation of exceedance monitoring and tracking equipment in the industry has had a dramatic effect on standardization.  What that means is that if you have a little box in the aircraft that is tracking everything you are doing, and management can see what you are doing any any given time... guess what?  People will behave better.  They won't like the intrusiveness, but they will behave better, because they really won't have a choice.  What management ultimately does with this data is a whole nuther topic, and one that will set the tone for the acceptance of the program, grudging or otherwise.

Ideally, if the line and safety work well together, the majority of threats will be identified and managed.  There will always be unsafe people, unsafe acts, and stupid policies, and they will all have to be dealt with.  But no one at any level should ever confuse a safety PROGRAM with a SAFE program.

Wisdom o' the Gulf

(Originally published in Autorotate Magazine)

ERRWOLF’S GENERALIZED GULF WISDOM

(or, “Mistakes I’ve Made Lately”)

A sleeping passenger is a happy passenger.

A quick walk around inspection is the cheapest insurance you can get. 

Get rushed, get complacent, get hurt. 

How would you explain what you are doing right now to an accident investigator?

Pay attention to the old farts.  Well, most of them. 

Jet A etiquette: When on the beach, take as much fuel as you can carry.  When offshore, take no more fuel than you need.

A swimming passenger is a most unhappy passenger. 

Work boats are in a unique position to notice changes in the weather sooner than anyone else.  Many of them have radar.  If they start calling YOU to tell you about the weather, I hope you’re tied down. 

Turning the blade by hand before starting is a good way to check for those annoying tiedowns you may have forgotten. 

Want to meet a crane operator?  Land and take off when he’s operating the crane and doesn’t know you’re there.  

A passenger who had to take the boat because of bad weather may be a crabby passenger, but he’ll live through the ride. 

Some great truths in the Gulf of Mexico:

1.   You will have a headwind when you are short on gas.

2.   You will have bad visibility if you’re not sure where the destination is.

3.   You will have more flight time than sleep time the day after you stay up too late. (Try it, it works)

Above all else, fly the aircraft. 

Wash your own dishes and sheets and you’ll live longer.

A passenger who is upside down in a helicopter full of water is the unhappiest passenger of all.  This is why you should brief your passengers, preferably before you leave and not halfway through an emergency procedure.

If you need help at the shore base to put 30 gallons in your Bell 206 at 7AM on a Thursday, you are part of the problem. 

There are two times when you especially need to do a walk around inspection of the aircraft:

1.   When you are unfamiliar with your aircraft, and:

2.   When you are all too familiar with your aircraft. 

The more you check the weather, the less you will be surprised when some weather shows up. 

Don’t feel so paranoid, they’re all trying to kill me too. 

Fly safe, EW