Actions cause injuries

To understand why injuries happen so frequently, we need to start with what we can observe – our actions.

Here are the three basic kinds of actions we take:

* We follow orders
* We direct ourselves
* We operate out of habit

When you first begin a job, you are careful to follow orders. As you gain experience, you have the confidence to direct your own actions. After repeatedly doing the same task, it becomes a habit. When people begin to direct themselves and operate out of habit, they might decide to take short cuts, a calculated risk which causes accidents. Here’s one example:

A man on a roof doing repairs fails to realize how close to the edge he’s working. He loses his footing, hits the roof and falls off.

Was he following orders? No.
Was he directing himself? Yes, he knew from experience how to do the work.
Was he operating out of habit? Possibly. If he’d done the same job over and over, he took it for granted, failed to scan to see how close he was to the edge of the roof and fell off.