When my dad went to work for the DuPont company over 50 years ago, he joined a “safety culture” that did everything possible to avoid on-the-job injuries. That culture found its way home in 1963 when he drilled holes in the floorboard of our old Studebaker and bolted in some seatbelts, adding a new measure of closeness to our family of seven. So when I started with DuPont in 1979, I was already steeped in that safety culture, ready to find and fix a safety problem before an injury might occur.
Our current culture is at the other end of the pole. We often take crazy taxicab rides through unbelievable traffic, but I’ve never found seatbelts in the back seat. There is quite a bit of give and take on the highway, but our “harmonious society” can quickly break down in traffic. While riding on a bus last month, my driver came a bit too close to this car:
As I’ve said before, construction projects abound in our city. And where there are tall buildings, there are people one step away from a long fall with a hard stop, often without a safety rope:
We occasionally find that some words do not translate well into the local language. Three words that most people here would not understand: “child safety seat.” Of course, if you had to use one on a scooter, you wouldn’t be able to get the whole family on-board:
I’m not sure who came up with the expression “If you don’t like how I drive, stay off the sidewalk,” but they must’ve lived in China. While walking downtown yesterday, we had to be very careful to avoid being run over by the steady stream of scooters, honking and weaving through pedestrians on the sidewalk to avoid road construction:
I would estimate that about 80% of people here wear eyeglasses. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone wearing safety glasses, including the folks running the chop saw at this metal working shop near one of our favorite bus stops:
I’m also not sure if I’ve ever seen any of the road construction people wearing eye protection, including these two guys that we walked by on Sunday using a concrete saw and a jackhammer:
As I said when I started this blog (or is it a rant?), safety culture is probably something that you learn as a child. When we see someone blindly walk in front of traffic here, we often wonder if their mother told them “Now Johnny, whatever you do, DO NOT look both ways before crossing the street.” As we walked out of our apartment complex last week, we walked by this little guy whose mom was caring for her baby in the background. I can hear her now: “Johnny, I’m busy with the baby. Take this meat cleaver and go out to play next to the highway.”
Oooo…I cringed a lot while reading this and seeing these pictures!
Do people stop and exchange information when in accidents? or does no one have insurance.
Now I know what to get baby “eli” with the Christmas money you sent… chopchop 😉
it’s about time you did a blog about safety over here. All the things you talked about are sooooo true. And that last picture is fantastic. The bus accident picture was also good – it reveals another aspect of Chineseness – everyone getting off the bus and inspecting things whenever it stops for more than 5 minutes.
“Beaver Cleaver.” Nice.
The last time I was Asia, I noticed that they tied bamboo together for scaffolding – for multi-story buildings. Do they do that where you live?
Mark – it makes sense that I would get a comment on this blog from a DuPont Alumnus! I haven’t seen any bamboo scaffolding lately, but bamboo and reed material is still heavily used to secure the green mesh wrapping just outside of the actual scaffolds. Since most of the construction here is poured concrete, a huge amount of chiseled debris is pitched off the sides of buildings during finishing and trapped by this “secondary containment.”
Perhaps you could introduce safety googles??