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Abstract
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In 1970, the Medical Journal of Australia published an article titled "Accidents in Australia: the need for research". The essence of the article was that "the commonsense approach (to injury prevention) and its associated folk activity can now be described as palpably ineffective and due for replacement." The author was Eric W Wigglesworth (Wigglesworth, 1970).
In the same year, William Haddon Jr, MD, wrote an editorial introducing what was to become the single most important idea in the developing science of injury prevention. In an editorial "On the escape of tigers: an ecological note" (Haddon, 1970) Haddon outlined his famous argument that transfer of energy is the cause of injuries and thus the prevention of injuries is achieved through a data driven, systematic approach to minimising this transfer. From the third of his ten strategies for injury prevention (i.e. prevent the release of energy) he derived the title of his editorial.
As safety scientists and practitioners we took the idea of energy control and ran with it. It worked. It worked so well we did not take the time to read Haddon's editorial properly to find its complete message. Now we are left somewhat surprised to find the energy control approach seems to have led us to a dead end. Despite strong support for the scientific approach to injury prevention, there is a clear gap in the translation of this scientific evidence to injury prevention practice.
While energy may be the cause of injury, it also maintains life and luxury. Energy is not limited to discrete hazards that can be confined to create risk free zones in which individuals are totally safe. All tigers cannot be caged. Understanding the mechanisms of energy control cannot be the whole solution....
Arguably there is less interest now in injury prevention than there has been in Australia at any time in the last 50 years. Is the answer to do more of what we are doing, but do it better? Or has our systematic consideration of energy transfer factors become the new commonsense approach so palpably ineffective that Wigglesworth would now be calling for us to entirely rethink our approach and replace it with a more systemic way forward?
Language: en |