Holi (colours) festival - painful incidents

Every year Holiday will be celebrated in the country, by sprinkling colours on near and dear. Children and elders like the festival alike and play cheerfully, distributing sweets. People other than children also drink bhang and dance. At the end, they take bath to wash coloursAnd every year, there will be news of,

• persons admitted to hospitals because of effect of use of harmful colours, causing irritation, temporary/permanent damage to eyes, skin, etc
• persons vomitting because of excessive consumption or poor quality of bhang
• persons getting drowned in ponds and lakes as they do not swimming
• eruption of fights between groups of people because of indescent behavior

Like Diwali, this festival also some people suffer because of improper use of colours and others. Elders in the family should teach safety precautions and keep an eye so that Holi festival can be celebrated without pain.

Auto rikshaws - dangers due to narrow front

Sometimes, the drivers of autorikshaws on the roads take sudden unexpected turns on either directions leading to accidents. Any vehicle coming behind or along the auto-rikshaw will get involved in collision either from behind or on the sides resulting in verbal dual and traffic jams. For two wheeler drivers driving along, such turns lead to imbalance and falling on the road and getting over run by vehicles coming in opposite direction.

I feel there is a basic deign problem with auto-rikshaw. The driver takes turn as he wishes because he view is restricted both vertically and horizontally and being a narrow cabin in the front side, his perception of vehicle width is that of his cabin width and not that of passenger seat portion. If the autos are uniformly wide where the width of both driver seating area and passenger seat area are same, this perception problem will not exist. And there should two wheels in front also instead of single wheel and along with a steering instead of a handle to control directional movement will ensure safe driving.

Emergency exits - how they should be?

Recently, I attended a seminar and found the two doors marked as EXIT inside in the conference room, are leading to the same corridor. The conference room is located somewhat deep inside the building. I thought it is dangerous as any fire in the corridor will trap the seminar room occupants. Then during lunch time, I went behind the screens used for display of presentations and found two doors leading to outside of the building. Though, these doors are not marked as EXIT, still they serve the purpose. However, as they are not visible and there are no directional marks, people may or may not use them in an emergency.

Some of the guiding principles for emergency exits are,

1. doors should open outward
2. there should be one emergency exit for every 75 ft distance
3. emergency lighting along the corridor to maintain minimum illumination in case of failure of regular power supply
4. self glowing display signs (EXIT, arrow marking, etc)
5. availability of keys near the doors marked emergency exit, with hammer to break the box containing keys
6. not blocking the emergency exits
7. not having stairs in front of emergency exit doors

At some places, it looks funny to see signs of EXIT and directional arrows exactly on the doors instead of direction marks along the wall from inner rooms to outdoors. 

Only married men employed in a factory

In a Chinese factory that is engaged in manufacturing pesticides like guanidine nitrate, it is reported that only married men are employed. An explosion in the factory at about 0930 hr on 28th Feb 2012 led to 13 deaths and scores of injuries. The blast led to collapse of a workshop and breakage of window panes in 2 km radius. Tremors were felt by three villages nearby.
I am unable to guess the reason for only married male employees in the factory.

Huge propane storage tank in US to meet 6 month needs

A colorado based company proposes to have a 22.7 million gallon propane insulated tank. In the report, it is stated that locals will vote about the work on the project and describes about the facility, possible effects and measures. The report has some questions and some answers. It is an interesting article. I calculated fireball radius and its duration using the equations mentioned in "Major Hazard Control: A Practical Manual" published by ILO. The fireball radius is 803 m and its duration is 124 seconds. The impact distances for thermal radiation resulting from BLEVE/VCE extend much longer. It reminds me about the incident at New Mexico in the year 1984.
The owners must have taken suitable measures as per applicable NFPA and other regulations. Risk assessment of the proposed facility with its safety features, considering the presence of other manufacturing facilities and their impact will result in a meaningful conclusion.

Responsibility for failure to use PPE

In an article, the court dismissed the claim for the death of an employee as it is found that the employer did everything it can do to impart knowledge, train, issue PPE, conduct weekly meetings and toolbox meetings and so on.
Still, I feel effective supervision and not engaging the person when the employee refuses to wear PPE could have prevented such incident. Otherwise, why to engage supervisors. Apart from supervisors for safe production activities, site specific monitoring of safety supervision by designated persons will ensure accident prevention.

Road safety - Heavy penalties for traffic offences

As per a report in the year 2010, 1.3 lakh persons died due to road accidents. A study reveals road accidents cost the nation about Rs 1,00,000 crore.  There will be many road accidents which go unreported and authorities come to know of the accidents only when persons are seriously injured and require medical help.
Government proposes to penalize heavily those caught on the road with drunken driving/mobile use during driving/over speeding/jumping the signal/driving without helmet or seatbelt/using vehicle without registration. The government proposes penalties for first offence ranging from Rs 500 to 10,000 and for subsequent offences upto Rs 20,000. Dangerous driving and mobile use invite jail term also upto 2 years.
On this aspect, in earlier post way back in the year 2008-9, I felt the same.

Apart from penalising those with dangerous/unsafe driving, pedestrians crossing the roads without waiting for easing of road traffic, roadside business persons encroaching the roads, persons parking vehicles on the road also should be penalised heavily as they are also responsible for a number of road accidents and deaths.
And those caught with traffic offences should be forced to work on social service activities like cleaning the roads, schools, performing traffic control duties, etc.

Many times, to save the persons on the roads, vehicle drivers move away  and this during speed causes skidding/loosing control/hitting the road divider or street pole, etc leading to fall of the driver, toppling of the vehicle, hitting some other person/vehicle, etc and injury/death.

Government proposes to use 50% of the fines collected to use for road safety fund. Apart from this, I wish government gives 25% of the fines collected as incentive to the traffic police. In my earlier posts on the same topic, I opined to give some basic salary to the traffic police and allow them to take penalty amount as their income. This will also reduce burden on the government to maintain huge staff and encourage to recruit more and more traffic police all over the country by respective authorities. I also suggested in earlier posts to takeover properties of offending drivers/vehicle owners to teach lessons for life. In a situations where words are not enough, only actions / measures like above will control road accidents and save lakhs of lives.