That video got me thinking...
If someone tells you to hold the hand rail, your first thought is that
you want to punch them in the neck.
If someone tells you to put a lid on your coffee you may be tempted
to throw it in their crotch.
But be calm, and tell yourself that this sort of pedantry is a small
price to pay for some very real and life saving changes made to the
way we work in just one generation.
I travel in Indonesia a lot and it is very much a country that has yet
to embrace the HSE culture.
That's one way of putting it. Another way would be to say they are a
bunch of fecking maniacs.
Over there one simply has to bribe someone a few quid to get a driving
license and you are off. The fact that no one gets any formal training
on the roads there is very evident.
On a drive from Jakarta to Bandung, which is about four hours, my nerves
were worn away to bloody stumps by people constantly undertaking me,
covering two lanes, rampaging up the hard shoulder and a hundred other
things that would get you arrested in the UK.
Every few seconds some maniac on a moped would squeeze past me, using
the tiny gaps between me and the cars to either side or in front of
me. If it was just one wee guy then I wouldn't feel that bad about
spilling him into the street but most of the time he has a toddler
between his legs and his wife on the back holding a baby!
Driving through Jakarta is a constant game of 'Lets Not Kill Any
Babies (TM)'. That's not a nice game.
I hate that game.
Anyway, I am a neck punching, coffee-in-the-crotch kind of guy in
normal circumstances but by the time
I'd got to Bandung I was as clip-board carrying as your best HSE Nazi.
How stupid could they be? Risking not only their own lives, but
those of their loved ones with such gay abandon? Risking the life of a baby,
for Allah's sake just to jump ahead of the queue at some traffic lights?
Maybe that's how we all look to people who never let go of the hand rail?
Well, I know where I would draw the line, but I also know I would rather
have too much HSE than too little!
I've seen what it's like to have none at all and it's terrifying.
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