A new vision for living safely, at work, in life

Road accidents are in Italy and worldwide one of the leading causes of death, in 2022 (source: Istat) in Italy there were 3,159 fatal accidents, 8 deaths every day.
Currently in Italy we still have the tragedy of 1041 fatal accidents, 799 in the workplace, with a prevalence in the construction and agriculture sectors, and 242 in itinere, i.e. on the journey to work or during working hours (source: Inail).

The home is the place that sees, both in Europe and in Italy, the highest number of fatal accidents, mainly involving children in their early years, the elderly and women. There is no official statistical source that provides us with unambiguous data, except for emergency room admissions with subsequent hospitalisation.

In an Inail report, we read that on the domestic accident front, data from the 'Multiscope Survey on Households Aspects of Daily Life', in the first quarter of 2021, 633 thousand people were involved and  on this basis, it can be estimated that, over a 12-month period, the phenomenon involved approximately 2.5 million people. Numbers that foreshadow a fatal incidence two to three times higher than road and work accidents.

'Macro' statistical awareness must then be deepened with awareness of specific factors, e.g. accidents at work due to falls from ladders in 2022 resulted in 112 deaths, which is also one of the causes of domestic accidents, as well as failure to wear a protective helmet when building or riding a motorbike or bicycle, which we can put in the category of specific risks.

Legislation, European and national, has been moving, correctly, trying to guide the behaviour of the various actors, employers, workers, drivers, families, with rules, prohibitions, sanctions, training obligations in the world of work. Legislation to be continually evolved and improved, as trade unions rightly demand for the world of work.

But it is the intervention towards culture, the formation of human behaviour, the awareness of perception and reaction mechanisms in the face of a specific risk or risks in a specific environment that needs to be strengthened.

Kahneman popularised the concept of fast thinking and slow thinking  and gave the example for economic investments, pointing out how haste, misperception, emotional distortion, overconfidence with which we think we know things, automatic behaviour, habit, typical of fast thinking, can lead us to wrong decisions, and the importance of slow thinking for understanding reality, the ability to make better decisions. Is training people to be aware of their emotions, how to make decisions, how to prevent dangers in every physical and digital sphere a utopia? No, but an educational, integrated and continuous investment is needed.

A new vision of security, one that activates integrated educational processes, which starts at school and involves society, to provide evolved tools on the fundamentals of human behaviour, so that each person has more tools to use in all aspects of his or her life, from physical security, to IT and financial security and, why not, relational security, is then a valuable investment.

(*) President Skilla