Around five years back, as part of a training, we were working on the Risk Assessment for rooftop work.
One of them suggested lightning as a potential risk.
The other said ‘But when it is cloudy or stormy, we don’t go to the rooftop, right.’
The trainer then said:
Yes. You are right. You will not go to the rooftop when the weather is bad.
But say, you are already on the rooftop to setup five devices for your experiment. And you finished four.
The sky suddenly starts to turn cloudy and stormy. You hear thunders.
But you don’t run this time. Rather, you are conditioned to think, ‘Let me finish this one and leave, otherwise I have to come up again for this small work another day.’
You continue to work more hastily.
And that is how accidents happen.
People are mostly safe and sound when they are prepared. They get injured badly only when the accident happens in the least expected scenario.
- You carry your helmet always, but you don’t bother to take it when you are just driving to a nearby shop.
- You follow all rules. But you drive in the opposite direction when driving back home as taking a U-Turn is very long.
- You jump the signal thinking no vehicles are coming.
These are the situations where you take it for granted that nothing wrong happens. But there are points where there is high chance of getting a severe damage due to least amount of preparedness.
There is nothing wrong in being extra careful and overthinking for a small thing. Your friends might laugh at you or make fun of you for being over-perfectionist, but when you see loses you have escaped, you will feel proud and lucky about yourself.