Page 40 - Occupational Health & Safety, March 2018

FALL PREVENTION
Ladders—A Need for Change
The safest way to design a product is to design out the dangers. If it’s impossible to design out all of the dangers, then you guard against those dangers.
BY DAVID FRANCIS
Think about the products you use every day. How many of those products are exactly the same as they were when your grandfather used them? I bet you can’t name very many. Some of the very basic ones like a knife and fork or a needle haven’t changed, but most have. How many TV channels were there when you were a kid?
What did your phone look like? Our phone was stuck to the wall, and we had to turn a dial around for each number. How about your family car? Did
it have seat belts or airbags? Ours didn’t. If my dad wanted us to sit down, he would just tap the brakes, and down you went. So, why do cars have seat belts? Silly question, right?
Safety Through Design
Statistics show there are 10 million traffic accidents a year that result in more than 30,000 fatalities. We train people in driver education courses to avoid ac- cidents, but we know they are going to happen. Be-
34 Occupational Health & Safety | MARCH 2018
www.ohsonline.com
LITTLE GIANT LADDER SYSTEMS