When you do something long enough, you tend to forget what it was like learning how to do it in the first place. Months ago, when I wrote my first blog for Preventableca, I had a rudimentary understanding of what preventable injuries were and how they could be avoided. After months of blogging about helmets, medications, Sudoku, and Christmas lights, I now feel like the poster boy for preventable injuries.
But a comment made about our most recent campaign on another Vancouver blog got me thinking about our approach to safety and its effect. In December a handful of my fellow Vancouver area bloggers came together to chat about this blog and our campaign about wearing helmets on ski hills. Arguably one of the most popular Vancouver bloggers Miss 604 blogged about our helmet campaign, and one of her followers questioned how effective the message, “You probably won’t need a helmet today” is in trying to raise awareness about head injuries on the slopes.
The Community Against Preventable Injuries responded that,
“We know that most people know how to prevent injuries. The problem is that most people continue to take risks believing that, ‘It won’t happen to me.’”
The Community’s response went on to explain how our approach is to encourage discussion, not tell people what to do. And that, “If we’ve made someone consider their possibly dangerous behaviours for the first time in their life, even if most people don’t immediately change their ways, we’ve made progress in preventing needless injuries in the future.”
This questioning of our methods is part of the dialogue we want to promote on the issue of preventable injuries. It seems to me that dangerous habits are often either not talked about or are simply given lip service.
This got me thinking about how people communicate about preventable injuries in their lives, if at all. Is it parents giving their children the morning mantra, “Look both ways before you cross the street”? Is it discussions around dinner tables about the new electronic device ban in vehicles? Or is it campaigns like our and others that hopefully make people think about what they do?
It’s time to join the discussion. How do you persuade those in your life to be safe?
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Working for a safety consulting firm over the years has really rubbed off on me. It’s small, everyday things that relay from person to person. Now I have my husband acknowledging the little things he used to overlook. Even friends that I don’t see every day are impacted by my small constant reminders to buckle their seatbelt, or be sure that the emergency brake is set.
When I look around, I see risks because I was trained to see them. I know the ‘looking both ways before crossing the street’ campaign worked for me. I only wish they had a safety track in school for children so that they could learn early on to spot everyday risks for themselves and be able to successfully avoid them. Engraining these things at a young age helps to ensure sustainability.
Some people will inevitably have the ‘it won’t happen to me’ syndrome. But as stories are shared and more people become concerned with others well-being, those people too will stop taking the risks, if for no other reason but to appease those worried about them. That’s good enough for me!
Traci
I think only together we can achieve something!