Summer is finally here! No more snow and ice until next fall, hopefully late next fall. No more slipping and sliding in the parking lot and on the streets, no more broken wrists or blown out knees from the slopes and no more herniated discs from shoveling snow. That’s the good news. The bad news? Summer brings with it a whole new set of risks. More time in the car and on the roads, more time at lakes and beaches, and more time doing all those fun and exciting things that get us hurt.
If you’ve been around the Air Force for even a short amount of time you know we always hit off-duty safety hard at the beginning of winter and summer. Some of you may be wondering “why all the safety talk about what I do on my own time?” Well, let’s take a look at some numbers to help explain why.
Since 2005, Air Force members have been involved in 631 Class A Occupational (formerly known as ground) safety mishaps. In this case, Class A Mishap is a mishap resulting in a fatality or permanent total disability. Of those 631 mishaps, 577 were off-duty, 475 involved motor vehicles and 98 were related to sport and recreation activities. That’s nearly 60 people a year that have either lost their life or been permanently totally disabled, mostly due to off-duty motor vehicle and sports and recreation mishaps. That doesn’t even include Air Force civilian employees that were involved in off-duty mishaps.
I know, all that doom and gloom. It’s like we want you to just stay inside with the doors and windows shut and only leave to go to work. The actual goal of leadership and safety isn’t avoiding all risk, it’s risk management, mitigation and control. Risk management is a term we should all be familiar with by now. It’s required training and it’s constantly incorporated into most of our on-duty activities. Now it’s time to start incorporating it into our off-duty activities.
It’s not a complicated process, it’s just a matter of planning and preparing for whatever activity you will be doing and don’t take the leap if the risk isn’t worth the reward. Whatever activities you happen to be participating in, make sure you have the training needed to do them safely. If it requires personal protective equipment make sure you wear it, whether it’s a seatbelt, life vest, helmet, or anything in between. If it requires the use of a vehicle or piece of equipment, make sure it is in proper working order and all the safety features are working properly. Last, but definitely not least, if it requires training, PPE, vehicles or equipment, it probably shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol.
The idea behind all these precautions is to reduce the risk in any activity to an acceptable level, not to eliminate all risk. If you have any questions regarding risk management or would like safety information regarding a chosen summer activity, please feel free to give us a call at the 460th Space Wing Safety office at (720) 847-7233.