It Can’t Happen to You?

Have you ever heard someone say "It can’t happen to me"? Maybe you’ve even said it yourself.

If we haven’t said it out loud, most of us have at least thought it at some time or another. We think it just before we do something that is a little unsafe—or maybe quite a bit unsafe. We know better. We know the safe way to do it. But we take that chance. We are, in fact, saying "I know this could result in an accident, but it can’t happen to me."

Why can’t it happen to you? What makes you so special? Why take that chance? Sooner or later, the person who keeps saying "It can’t happen to me" will wind up saying "If only I had …"

• "If only I had worn my safety glasses, I wouldn’t have lost my eye."
• "If only I had walked instead of run, I wouldn’t have tripped and broken my leg."
• "If only I had taken my ring off, I wouldn’t have lost my finger on the machine."

The next time you find yourself saying "It can’t happen to me," remember that anything can happen to anybody, anytime, if they act in an unsafe manner or are exposed to an unsafe condition.
I’d like to tell you about a few actual work accidents that resulted in injuries and lost time. The people involved are people like you and me—but the difference is that their own personal "It can’t happen to me" happened.

• A bartender cut her finger on a broken beer bottle when she reached into the beer cooler.
• An employee was frightened by the noise of a ruptured air line, so she started to run. She tripped and fell, spraining her neck and bruising her head and ankle.
• A police officer, while chasing two suspects, jumped over a low wall on a building under construction. He caught his foot on the wall, fell into a pile of bricks and construction materials, and sprained his leg.
• A janitor strained his back trying to get a power lawn mower he was operating out of some mud it had become stuck in.
• Highly flammable glue was mistakenly applied by an employee to a work surface. When he started his drill, the electrical sparks ignited the glue fumes and burned his hands and face.
• An employee in a restaurant suffered a head injury and knee lacerations when he slipped on a piece of lettuce.
• A cook broke a toe when he opened a freezer door and 10 pounds of frozen ground beef slid out and fell on his foot.
• A bookkeeper received burns to her left arm and side when a coffee urn she was disconnecting tipped over and spilled hot coffee on her.
• A truck driver injured his neck and back when he drove over a bump in the road and hit the top of the truck with his head.
• A truck driver jumped off a loading dock, landed on a soda can, and sprained her ankle.
• An employee was injured during horseplay in a bakery when someone threw a dough ball and hit him in the eye.
• A stock clerk in a grocery store suffered a fractured rib when cans of soup he was stacking fell over on him.
• An employee injured his leg when he fell while running to the first-aid room to get help for another employee.
• A welder suffered a first-degree burn in her ear canal when she was welding and a hot spark flew into her left ear.
• An employee in an automobile dealership was hit by the car he was working on when he left it running in gear without fully setting the emergency brake. The car ran into him and fractured his leg.

All of us should remember that a person with an "It can’t happen to me" attitude is dangerous. He or she may escape injury from unsafe acts or conditions, but may expose those around him or her to injury. So someone acting in an unsafe manner needs to be told about it. An unsafe condition needs to be reported. But don’t leave the telling and reporting to somebody else. Take those necessary actions yourself. After all, safety is everybody’s business.