Cowboy Safety

What is Cowboy Safety?

Cowboy Safety is a common sense approach to safety that reduces injuries and other losses while enhancing profits and company image. It reinvents safety for the 21st century global economy.

Cowboy Safety does not dwell on industry statistics, average costs of a workers’ comp claim or on making and enforcing rules and regulations. It does not concentrate on high-cost reductionist safety management processes that often fail. Press reports of refinery fires, confined space incidents, train and bus crashes and many smaller incidents show that more often than not the obvious is not considered.

Cowboy Safety assumes limited resources yet a job that must be done. The nameless cowboy in Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter survives not just with his technical skills but by constantly anticipating what could happen and being prepared for it. Having a gun on his lap in the barber shop is more important than a stack of training cards. Cowboy Safety starts with real needs and attitudes rather than a safety video filmed in a studio.

 While anchored in the past Cowboy Safety is taken from a vision of how things could and should be. Sources may be anecdotal in origin but are scientific in practice. With history and fictional stories, a laboratory is created that is unaffected by the “noise” and familiarity of the present world.

As an example picture if you will three cowboys riding in a pickup truck. Which one is the real cowboy? The answer is the one in the middle. He does not have to drive and he does not have to get out of the truck to open and shut gates. He could be described as lazy and may be napping. In fact he is a pragmatist. There is a lower probability of an incident that would keep him from his real job. Many injuries and fatalities occur and much collateral damage is caused from driving when driving should not be done and working when working should not be done.

In a real incident near Lander Wyoming three men were injured in a head-on crash on a snowy day with low visibility. They observed all of the defensive driving techniques of slowing down, lights on, seatbelt usage, scanning and driving to the right. But why were they driving? They had gone back to the shop for more parts because they had not planned properly at the start of the day. There were costs other than the crash that involved their entire company and its mission. Cowboy Safety would have prevented this incident.

Cowboy Safety programs are customized and localized. The process is boiler plate but the deliverable is not. Each program is collaborative and is reconciled with the business and relevant environmental models. A dynamic safe experience involving social technology is designed that considers all stakeholders. The organization achieves sustainable and measurable improvements with dramatically reduced costs.

The Safest Plan is a Hidden Weapon

Is your safety plan as effective and cost efficient as the plan of the nameless cowboy in the movie High Plains Drifter ?

In the barbershop scene he survives by having a gun on his lap. That is certainly safer than a stack of safety training cards!

Cowboy Safety is a common sense approach to safety that reduces injuries and other losses while enhancing profits and company image. It reinvents safety for the 21st century global economy.

We work with you to design a new and simpler approach to safety that considers all the stakeholders and your mission. It will have the added benefit of sustainability and meeting corporate social responsibility goals.

Opening Prayer - First Cooperative Safety Congress - Milwaukee WI - Sept 30, 1912

Dr Edward a Steiner, Professor of Applied Christianity, Grinnell College:

Oh Lord, Our God, who dost promise to those who meet in Thy name Thine own presence, we have come together not to consider our own weal or wealth; we have come here in Thine own name to consider the well-being of our fellowmen, and we would invoke Thy blessing, ask Thee to meet with us whom Thou hast chosen to be co-workers with Thee. We pray that Thou may be with us and help us not only to light the way, but help us to keep the way, and grant that everything that shall be done at this Congress shall work for the well-being of our fellow-men for the glory and development of our own country, and for the speedy coming of the Kingdom of God. May our consideration of the safety of labor and the toiler be rewarded by a higher respect for humanity as a whole, a greater regard for law, a purer and deeper and higher patriotism, wilst Thou bless this city in which we meet, this Commonwealth, our beloved country, the President of the United States, his cabinet and all his officers, this great country and all its states from one end to the other and may it continue to be the great beacon to the world, lighting toward liberty and toward progress, and may the work which we do here this morning be a contribution toward that end. Bless the President of this Association, all the officers, all those who take part, and may it be as solemn as it is sacred, and may it be useful as we try to make it holy. We ask it all in the Master’s name, who gave himself for the good of men. Amen.