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“Accidents” happen. (I used to be a medic, and I firmly believe there is no such thing as a true “accident”.) If you look at the whole scene, you can find the point on the timeline up to the “accident” where the patient got stupid. And then I had to be there.
And yes, drunk mowing is a real thing. I had to overturn a riding lawnmower once to look for a bit of finger. But the two fatalities involving lawnmowers I did, had no alcohol involved—just stupidity was all that was required.
I've been teaching my kids that "accidents happen because either someone did do something they shouldn't have or they didn't do something they should have, and it's important to learn from accidents and near-accidents to avoid them in the future"
It's incredible the number of adults I encounter who lack this wisdom and just shake off accidents as random chance without seeing the choices that led to them
Keep pounding it into them. The second most worst thing I had to do as a medic was hand out teddy bears to injured and sick children. I hated those calls.
***A Teddy Bear is perhaps the greatest medical device ever invented for treating a sick or injured child on scene. A shout out and all Blessings to our local motorcycle club for donating Teddy Bears to us by the case. They eased a lot of fear and pain.
It’s why I refuse to use the word and instead say incident.
Another EMT here. The vast majority of the time it happens because of two mistakes, people almost never get seriously injured because of one thing, it is usually "I disabled or ignored this one safety step, then I got distracted for a second at the wrong time" or something similar. Could be alcohol, could be laziness, could be pressure to finish something for a boss that doesn't care.
Safety is typically defense in depth, and one failure isn't enough to cause a major issue.
Tho, there are MAJOR exceptions.
In aviation, this is called an “error chain.” It’s one of the concepts taught in ground school. Human error is a frequent element of accidents, so there is a focus on training pilots to find & fix mistakes early to “break” the “error chain” and prevent disaster.
Oh I agree, those are generally the base errors. People are stupid and do a lot of stupid things and disable safety devices or ignore safety protocols. I can remember scraping 4 fingers out of a 40 ton punch press with a putty knife, (it was handy), at an industrial accident with a putty knife. He had wired a safety latch back. Both of the lawnmower fatalities were caused by operating a heavy riding mower going across a steep side hill. The mowers rolled and crushed and suffocated the operators.
As a medic, I made my living dealing with everyone else's stupid actions.
I just noticed the pun.
Fire Department Chronicles pretty much underlines exactly this. Emergency situations caused by some level of stupidity. Often no communication, bad supervision or training, some stunt, or just extremely poor judgement leading up to whatever happened that caused the call in the first place.
Getting hit with a meteorite?
God's bullet.
Obviously, it's an act of god.
Lack of situational awareness. Or to put it another way-- Pull your head out of your arse.