【Safety is also important in HaiChuan Chemical production】Are there any examples of Murphy’s Law around you?

Applications in safety management – Psychologically: Low-probability events cannot be ignored. How should we pay attention to low-probability events? First, nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface ； Second, things that can go wrong will always go wrong ； Third, if you worry that something will happen, then it is more likely to happen.

Many people may not yet understand Murphy’s Law. To give a simple example: we have surely played the coin-tossing game in our daily lives; usually we only guess whether it will land on the ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ side. But statistically, there is also a possibility that it will stand upright, although this probability is very low. According to Murphy’s Law, no matter how low the probability, as long as such a possibility exists, it will eventually happen. At a “safety competence” training session in 2016, one of the participants stood up and said, “He encountered an instance where a coin stood upright just a few days ago.” That day, when he got home from work and was changing his pants, three coins fell out of his pocket, and one of them was standing upright. Although statistically, the probability of the coin landing on its edge is 0.01%, based on this student’s experience, it is 30%. Although events with a low probability are certainly rare events, it’s not necessary for them to occur many times before they happen. Take “coin tossing” as an example: according to statistical data, it takes 10,000 tosses for a coin to land on its edge just once, yet the case of the student shows that three coins out of just three tossed landed on their edges. The same is true for unsafe behaviors around us; although statistically, 2.4 million such behaviors are required to cause one death, in reality it’s possible that just one violation of the rules can lead to a serious accident, or it’s possible that you commit 2.399999 million violations without any accidents occurring. Unsafe behavior is like gambling: most of the time you win, but there’s also a chance of losing, and the cost of that loss is your life and health. If we lose, it will be a disaster for us and our families; we will lose everything. We cannot risk our only life in the world

Unsafe behavior is like gambling: most of the time you win, but there’s also a chance of losing, and the cost of that loss is your life and health. Losing would be a disaster for us and our families; we would lose everything. We can’t risk our only life once in existence. Well put! Indeed, repeated unsafe behaviors stem from the assumption that serious consequences will not happen to one oneself; as the ancients said, it’s nothing more than trying to deceive oneself

I also remember an example: many years ago, a few young men were smoking outdoors, and as soon as they finished smoking, they threw the cigarettes on the ground. A young guy joked that whoever throws it successfully will have to buy the meal. Of course, such a thing did not happen at that time. Another person said that if the cigarette butt I throw on the ground stays standing, then I’d better go home and stay there, as an accident might happen. Actually, this also relates to the issue of low-probability events; it’s just that no laws have been formulated regarding them. It shows that people had some simple understanding of this a very long time ago as well. For some low-probability events, if external conditions change, or if there are factors that alter their probability, it is possible to **increase the likelihood of them occurring. For example, a coin or cigarette butt thrown and landing on muddy ground has a much higher chance of staying there. Similarly, when unsafe behaviors are combined with unsafe conditions of objects and management deficiencies, the likelihood of catastrophic accidents is by no means low!

Could you share some examples from your surroundings for everyone to learn from?*