Driving the Science of Prevention into Reverse

Dr John F. Culvenor

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Introduction:	The use of television, along with other mass media, is becoming popular in Australia as a way to attempt to prevent accidents both on the roads and at work. Most notably the Victorian Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) for about seven years has saturated the media with messages that drivers, labelled bloody idiots, ought to watch out for fatigue, lack of concentration, impatience, and so on. Their stern advice is accompanied by violent images of car crashes supposedly demonstrating the effects of not heeding their warnings. In what seemed to be an extension of the TAC style of campaign into the arena of occupational health and safety, the Assistant Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Gary Johns last year launched a national mass media campaign coordinated by Worksafe Australia. The campaign featured an advertisement known as the Bear Trap previously used by the Victorian Workcover Authority. The advertisement consisted of an industrial workplace scene featuring an open bear trap and a number of workers, one of whom was blindfolded. The blindfolded worker put their hand in bear trap and SNAP! The caption read; "Inexperience can be a death-trap". The bear trap posed no treat to the workers without blindfolds indicating that the risk of workplace injury is due to ignorance of hazards on the part of particular workers. Given that the message did not focus on management of the hazard, but on promotion of worker awareness, the message seemed to be a perpetuation of the myth of the careless worker. Unfortunately while campaigns like these may be attractive public relations exercises, the messages often used have the potential to return the focus of prevention to the victim-blaming of the past. Furthermore the underpinning reasons behind this particular campaign are questionable.
Full Reference:	Culvenor, J. 1997, 'Driving the Science of Prevention into Reverse', Safety Science, vol. 27, no. 1, p. 77-83.
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