I remember attending a conference some years back with the obligatory presenter on health and safety. At one point she launched into the old chestnut of the era assured to disenfranchise at least two thirds of the attendees – that there’s no such thing as common sense. Regardless of academia’s view on specific definition, the ‘common’ ignorant folk were two thirds lost at that point.

Of course, I couldn’t help myself and had to engage post-presentation where I learned the concept of environmental awareness as being the actual phrase we knuckle-draggers mistakenly assigned to the fictitious ‘common sense’. Now, the premise of this jewel is you only know the risk is a risk because you understand the environment. Where we got to was, I only know a charging rhinoceros is dangerous because I’ve watched a lot of David Attenborough, and an Amazonian tribesman would have no clue a Caterpillar 988 wheel-loader with a grab full of logs thundering toward him was a potential risk, happily succumbing to its front tyres without the slightest increase in adrenaline or blood pressure… I kid you not. I offered the comment that yes – the same tribesman might get hoodwinked when presented with a colonial bearing a musket, thinking it’s a blinged-out spear moments before presenting himself at the Pearly Gates. But not twigging to the potential risk of 30 tonne loaders or violent mammals with an obvious dose of ‘mean’ on? Absolute bullshit.

She said it’s why new workers will reach around a guard to adjust a piece of wood, and get their fingers severed by a circular saw. I told her it was because they’re meatheads, but she assured me it was not having ‘environmental awareness’.

We parted, her with pursed lips at my label assigned to her life’s work, and I was supposed to be thankful I was still alive having only been trained by career professionals and not experts.

Now, you’ll note thus far there’s an element of past tense in the tale regaled above. That’s because, from my observations, there’s been an apparent steer away from verbalising this concept at big events. I don’t know, they may still believe the ‘no common sense’ thing, and might simply be waiting until all the Gen-Xer’s are dead before reintroducing it at the pulpit.

Well, I have to say, years later, a part of me wonders if I owe that lady an apology. Maybe, there is no such thing as common sense after all – although, with what’s churning through my head, I’m conflicted with ‘environmental awareness’ also. Let me explain.

In the past two weeks, the first stage of the north and southbound expansion of Auckland’s Southern Motorway between Papakura and Drury has opened. The project widens the carriageway from two to three lanes in both directions and currently terminates at about the halfway point. There are no cones, tape, signs – nothing! It’s open, it’s expansive, it’s wonderful – save for one critical point.

I guess at some stage in the next couple of years we’ll see the first theodolites and diggers commencing work on the next stretch to the Drury end; however, the reality is, we’ll being living with it in its current form for probably two years at least. My jaw-dropping issue is they’ve terminated the third southbound lane, bringing it back into two lanes, immediately adjacent to the BP Papakura Truckstop! I absolutely could not believe my eyes when travelling on it for the first time last week.

My mind instantly flashed back to the robust debate I had all those years ago, and could the cold flush I was now experiencing be doubt? ‘Was she right? Is there no such thing as common sense?’

On that project there would have been many, many, big-brained people with many certificates confirming their expertise in many things. There would even have been experts in ‘safety’. Yet, when distraction is trumpeted from the hilltops of driving piety as a lead cause of accidents, here’s a modern road construction project on the nation’s busiest road terminating a third lane right outside one of the more significant distractions on the Southern Motorway network.

I know the boffins tell us a good driver is one who holds the steering wheel at ten-to-two, concentrating diligently out the windscreen without interruption. We all know that’s a load of bollocks and again undermines the validity of crucial concepts. No driver – truck or otherwise – has ever been able to do it, ever will be able to do it, and neither could they do it.

Likewise, anyone who says they’ve never so much as glanced into the BP Papakura Truckstop while passing is lying through their teeth. Like staring out the windscreen uninterrupted, it’s absolute bullshit. In both instances, even our primal mechanisms would at least once undertake a threat/no threat check at a random peripheral movement in or around the facility. For all the places along the project path they could have brought those lanes together, they chose there!

Then I thought, maybe our bevvy of construction academics live in apartments and use public transport as a norm – and therefore lack environmental awareness? Might I suggest the inclusion of a savvy old truck driver in the design team of major roading projects that inadvertently set humans up for certain failure? You’ll need a squinty-eyed, tattooed, and cynical old geezer, one with four or five million largely trouble-free kilometres under his arse to look at what’s being proposed. If he looks at the plans and asks ‘have you ever seen a David Attenborough nature programme?’, and suggests a trip to the zoo to pat the rhino in the event you answer ‘No’, you might contemplate a redesign of certain parts of your project.

If you’re a transport operator using the Auckland Southern Motorway, please add this catastrophe in waiting to your toolbox talks with the crew. Please don’t let them be a victim of someone else’s failure. Tell the team to add a few metres gap between them and vehicle in front for goodness sake.

All the best

Dave McCoid
Editorial Director