Safety Belt
Volume 14, Issue 2 -- 2Q09 Welcome By John Lieberman, Editor jlieberman37@... There’s an old saying that, “April showers bring May Flowers.” But, in many parts of the country, both April and May have brought nasty weather in the form of flooding and tornadoes. And there are parts of the country that still haven’t thawed out from the Winter freeze. We certainly hope that the wacky weather hasn’t severely impacted any of you or your Solo programs. For the most part, we’re going to dedicate this issue of The Safety Belt to Incident Reports -- both what you’ve asked for from us and what we need from you. Many of you may not know it, but we (the SSC) spend a lot of our time going over the Incident Reports that you submit. We get them after Pete Lyon and his folks in Risk Management have had a chance to go over them first. I’ll talk later in this issue about what we do once we receive them. But, for now, let’s take a look at what’s been reported to us so far this year. Solo Safety Scorecard Q1 By Kathy Barnes, SSC Chairman kjbarnes22@... The SSC will be providing a summary of the incident reports which have been received each quarter. This is being done to increase awareness of incidents which have been reported and also to answer your requests for more information about those incidents. This is a summary of incident reports which have been received for events in January - March of 2009. 1. Car hit dip on course, braked hard, veered to one side and hit curb then shrub. Damage to car, shrub and broken curb 2. Car turned wide and slid off course. Hit curb and shrub. Broke curb. Damaged shrub. 3. Car left the start, fish-tailed, turned, and went off course. Hit fence. Bent pole. Fence and pole repaired. 4. Car slid on course, turned sideways and then hit curb while going sideways and backwards. Damage to fence, 2 sections of curb, and car. 5. Car spun at end of course. Hit curb. Damage to car.* 6. Worker twisted ankle while running for downed cone.* 7. Car rolled in slalom. 8. Piece of asphalt broke off, kicked up and knocked muffler (additional for site sound limits) off car. 9. Car touched bumpers with non-competition vehicle in paddock. 10. Driver broke hand on steering wheel while competing.* 11. Car spun coming out of Chicago box, slid across drain (off course) and cracked wheel. * These reports were submitted on forms printed in 1998. The club address on the forms is wrong, The forms have been updated to provide better information to the Solo Safety Committee and Risk Management. Please use the latest ones. Insurance Certificates are now being emailed to Regions. As a result, we have seen the following situations: No incident report forms or green cards on site. Outdated forms being used. Wrong address. No information about green card on the form. Some forms ask for “cause” of incident. PLEASE: discard those old forms, and use the ones with dates of 2005 or later in the lower right corner. If you do not have current forms or green cards for your region, request some from Deena Rowland at drowland@.... Major Incident Reports which are being reviewed by Risk Management and the SSC will not be posted until the review is completed. Just the Facts, Ma’am, just the Facts By Jan Rick, SSC member janice@... A once-popular program, in the days of black and white television, was a detective show called “Dragnet.” The famous sergeant on the program, Joe Friday, had a simple line that he used all the time to interrogate people, "Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts." Facts sometimes get lost or become muddled in the telling. A fact is: A statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened; An event known to have happened or something known to have existed; A concept whose truth can be proved. Solo incident reporting requires just the facts. It is imperative that we only report just the facts. Why? Look at these examples: Statement 1: “2007 Corvette in heat 3 on a dry course was exiting the slalom. Car appeared to get loose and skidded into fence that was located 103 feet from the cones.” Statement 2: “The Corvette went into the slalom too fast and could not make it without hitting cones, so driver tried to brake and got the car into a spin that then skidded into a fence that was on the side of the course. Driver should have entered the slalom slower”. In this instance, Statement 1 states the facts while Statement 2 has already decided the reasons for and the cause of this incident. The SSS doing the report can not, nor should not, make his/her opinions part of the report. If this incident went into litigation, opinions could and often would, hurt the case. The SSS is not qualified to make decisions about the reasons things happen, even if they seem simple. His or her responsibility is just to report what happened. The job of the SSS is to obtain facts, ma’am, just the fact’s. Another reason that the SSS should gather only the facts and not insert any opinions is that once he or she has determined the supposed cause of that incident, that person quite often won’t continue to gather all of the remaining facts. All the facts are needed. One recent report that we received said, “Car spun and hit curb”. There were no other facts. No map, no pictures, no mention of how far the curb was from the course, no MPH, etc. Whenever there is an incident involving a vehicle hitting something, measurements, maps, photos, and any other available information need to be included to show as many of those facts as possible. All of the people who review these reports need all of the facts they can get so they are able to review those facts and look at the big picture of Solo Safety even though they may not have been there when the “incident“ occurred. They have the job of looking at all of these reports from the entire program to see if there are trends or common problems in multiple locations. They can also look at the facts and use those facts to see if safety rules need to be revised or created. With reports that have such limited information, nothing is gained by the report. I know that all of you are very interested in improving the safety of the Solo program, and this is one way we can all try to manage incidents and possibly learn from them. What Happens to Those Incident Reports? By John Lieberman, Editor jlieberman37@... Many of you have asked me over the years, and I have always tried to respond in the same way, “What happens to an Incident Report after I submit it?” The answer is complex -- yet, at the same time, it’s pretty simple. When you fill out an Incident Report form, it’s in two parts. The white, original, copy goes to Risk Management in Topeka. The yellow, second, copy goes to your Divisional Solo Safety Steward. There used to be a third, pink, copy that was yours to keep for your own records. However, that third copy no longer exists. So we would strongly recommend that you photo-copy the original before submitting it to Risk Management and keep that copy for your own personal records. Any supporting paperwork that you send to Risk Management should also be photo-copied and sent to your DSSS. You should also keep copies of that supporting paperwork for your own files. Once the original is received by Risk Management, it is immediately reviewed to determine the type and severity of the incident. In most cases, those Incident Reports are just reviewed, logged, and filed by Risk Management. They are also copied and sent on to the Solo Safety Committee for our review. However, if it’s a major incident -- one involving death, serious injury, or major property damage -- the Incident Report will be subject to much further review and investigation by Risk Management before we ever see it. Then, after we do, we may initiate an additional investigation to get to the bottom of what happened and to look for ways to keep it from ever happening again. The copy you send to your DSSS will also be reviewed by him/her. Again, if it’s a Major Incident, your DSSS will immediately launch a full-scale investigation into what happened -- in the hope of preventing anything like that from ever happening again in the future. All of us who review your Incident Reports do so with a two-fold purpose. First, we want to get to the bottom of any Major Incident that has occurred -- do whatever we can to remediate the circumstances -- and then look for ways to keep anything like that from ever happening again. But, second, we also want to look for trends. If we see the same type of incident occurring in several Regions, we’re going to come down hard on everybody like we did last year with incidents at the finish. Unfortunately, all of our harping last year didn’t seem to do a whole lot of good. The first few Incident Reports that we received this year, again, concerned problems at the finish. So we’re going to keep working with Regions on that issue. National-level course designers like Roger Johnson and Karen Babb stress over and over again that it’s always best to design the finish before you design the rest of the course. We couldn’t agree more. As I always tell my SSS trainees, “If in doubt, fill it out!” We’re not going to hold it against your Region if we get a whole bunch of Incident Reports about piddly little things that we can just write off and file for future reference. But we ARE going to hold it against your Region if you should fail to report an incident that we might happen to learn about later via internet chatter or personal conversation. Like I said, “If in doubt, fill it out!” License Renewal By Kathy Barnes, SSC Chairman kjbarnes22@... The first group of 3-year Solo Safety Steward licenses has been processed. Congratulations to everyone who worked at least 5 events and took the opportunity to attend a continuing education seminar to receive the 3-year license. Working with the Membership & Licensing folks at the National Office, we have developed a timeline which should enable all long-term (3 or more years) SSSs to receive their 3-year licenses by 2011 by working a minimum of 5 events in 3 years and attending a continuing education class. What’s a continuing education class? It’s just a SSS class taught by a licensed SSSI. You need to attend at least one during that 3-year window to get your license renewed. In simple terms, it’s just a refresher course. Things change over time and we want to make sure that all of our SSSs are up-to-date on the latest issues and requirements. License holders with over 1 year of service, who have worked as a SSS at 5 events and completed a continuing education seminar, will also be eligible for a 3-year license. In Parting By John Lieberman, Editor jlieberman37@... Thank you for taking the time to read this issue of The Safety Belt. As always, I would advise you to direct any questions you might have about any article in this issue to the person who wrote that article. That’s why I have included personal e-mail addresses for the author of each article. If you have an issue that you would like the Solo Safety Committee to address in the next issue, please don’t hesitate to send your suggestion directly to me. As the Editor of this publication, that’s my job. I’ll see that your concerns are directed to the whole SSC and, one way or another, we’ll get you an answer. From all of us on the SSC, THANK YOU for your continued efforts to make our sport as safe as it can possibly be without losing the “fun factor.” That “fun factor” is why we all got into this sport in the first place. We just want to make sure that everybody can have as much fun as possible without putting the future of our sport in jeopardy. Until next we meet -- go fast, have fun, but BE SAFE!!! |
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