Did you know that smoking cigarettes used to be considered safe? In fact, smoking was deemed good for your health. So said “doctors in all parts of the country” in this 1949 ad for Camel cigarettes. Yet, just 22 years later, in 1971, the federal government banned tobacco companies from placing TV and radio ads because smoking was causing cancer.
So, what changed about cigarettes between 1949 and 1971 to inspire this change from “doctor recommended” to “too dangerous to advertise on TV?”
Nothing changed about cigarettes. The change took place in our culture.
Our culture helps us define what’s safe and unsafe. Because of this, what our culture considers “safe behavior” changes as our culture changes. That’s how the same activity that was “safe” in 1949 turned “deadly” by 1971. In the case of cigarettes, research and observational data about smoking helped drive this cultural shift.
Similar safety shifts have played out, over and over, throughout modern history. In the early days of industrialization, for example, adults worked in factories for 16 or more hours per day, seven days a week, alongside their small children who worked long hours, too. Factory owners fired workers who got hurt and couldn’t work. This was a normal way to run a factory. It’s not normal anymore, at least not in the U.S. and Western Europe.
Same goes for personal decisions like buckling up in the car. If you’re 40 or older, you probably didn’t wear a seat belt growing up. Now, you probably buckle up. What changed? Our safety culture.
Large infrastructure projects were especially unsafe for workers of previous centuries. For example, the Brooklyn Bridge, constructed in the 1870s and early 1880s, claimed at least 21 lives. Eleven people died building the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s. Building the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914, killed at least 25,000 people.
We know each of these lost lives held immeasurable value, and we assume each death was grieved by the deceased person’s family and friends. But how did our culture respond to these infrastructure-related deaths? With a shrug, more or less. In those days it was normal to die at work when you worked a dangerous job.
Of course, you could argue that without the internet, the general public didn’t hear about these deaths, so the public had no way to decide whether the death toll was culturally acceptable. That’s true. But the fact that the deaths weren’t front-page news also shows how 19th and 20th century culture accepted construction worker deaths as a typical part of life.
Modern construction work is much safer than it was a century ago, partly because our culture no longer considers death a customary part of the job. Even so, tragic and unexpected accidents still happen on American job sites. Some crew members don’t make it home alive at the end of their shift, and others suffer life-changing injuries on the job. Still others develop chronic injuries that quietly affect the rest of their lives.
History tells us culture should continue to shift toward safety, making our work safer along the way. At InfraStripe we can’t wait for the culture to change. It’s our job, as leaders in the industry, to change the culture, to help shift culture more toward safety, to help build a culture of safety through which everybody does more to avoid injuries and fatalities — a culture that builds safety into every decision about every project.
We do this through our daily habits, through innovation, and through our interactions with anyone who works in transportation or uses transportation.