The Safety Plateau is a phenomenon that has emerged over the last 20 years and longer. It can also be observed in graphs depicting current safety performance metrics such as (external work related) fatalities per year per industry, where the graphs do not show any sustained improvement over periods of time while known budgets (to improve it) were expended.

This phenomenon has reportedly been observed in Australia, America, Britain, Russia and the United Nations. Most observers and even experts seem to feel that human behavior is the primary cause and have reacted with associated corrective measures. While no specific performance monitoring of the measures were executed (or made available), it has become clear that the plateau continues undisturbed.

Some fatality “rate” graphs such as from the South African Mine Industry shows linear improvement allowing intuitive projections that by 2014 zero fatality rates will be achieved. Naturally, such a graph is of great comfort to the presiding authorities creating great expectations of such a grand goal.

With Americans not experiencing transportation improvements despite already having very low speed limits, while Britain had fatality reductions due to fewer personnel, South Africa with reductions due to reduced productivity and Russia with increased fatalities due to production increases, making politically-correct instead of technically verified deductions, borders on the childish.

The reality of the South African graph is that it predicts personnel reduction to zero by 2014 i.e. zero production – not zero fatalities. This must be verified of course. However, who is willing to wait for such an answer?

An alternative safety plateau analysis (by Multiply Safety and Johann Theron) revealed human language to be the causal factor – not human behavior. After all, no-one endangers him/herself on purpose!

However, we all like to talk in fact; language is actually used as a weapon by intelligence services. But it was Jacques Derrida, a French-American philosopher who established a well formulated philosophy on language deconstruction.

His view apparently, was that language was an event and that all human life is grounded in our use of it. Strangely enough he did not seem to have realized (in his life) the continued ramifications and physical implications of his theory, on the safety of humankind. That human safety would ever be threatened by misinterpretations was unthinkable, but nevertheless quite real already from the begging of the language event.

The problem is that language interpretation differences eventually “materializes” in unexpected physical differences where these differences now (also) result in statistically least significant probabilities of occurrences of extremely severe hazards (and others).  

What this means is that real human safety has in fact gotten worse, not better. The graphs only indicate very short term histories but due to unknown least significant indicators with high severity in the future (such as global warming, oil dependency, nuclear proliferation and AIDS), the objective of zero harm can only be described as, well – deconstructed completely i.e. “nothing – no risk anymore”.

The risk authorities and leaders now face, is seemingly an innocent conflict of moral priorities. Fatalities; or fruitless expenditure?