Calculating Risk

Having hauled dangerous goods for 20-odd years, and having also been involved in a lawsuit south of the border, I can tell you it’s no contest as to which is worse. I’d hook on to a load of leaky drums full of the slimiest, foulest-smelling, glow-in-the-dark sludge you could find, hands down, rather than cast my fate to an American jury in civil litigation. Now that’s dicey.

Drivers who haul hazardous materials know the risk is minimal in situations that are properly managed, where the right tools are used by properly trained people. Problems do crop up occasionally, but most you can trace back to some attempt to save time or trouble. Shortcuts can be killers.

My worst experience occurred while unloading nitric acid at a plant in Southern Ontario. Due to a confluence of several unrelated circumstances, I found myself tending a tanker that had acid spraying out the top, under considerable pressure, with no way to stop it but to climb onto the tanker and close a shut-off valve adjacent to the leak. How it all came to pass is a long story, but suffice it to say, had we done a number of things differently (notice I didn’t say, “properly”), it would have been an uneventful trip. As was the case with the dozens of similar loads we delivered before and after that incident.

I know drivers who won’t go near a hazardous load with a barge pole, and I respect that. They’re uneasy about the consequences of an error, and that’s simple enough to understand. HAZMAT isn’t for everybody.

So how do you explain the driver who takes on the extra responsibility and perceived risk of hauling and handling hazardous materials on a regular basis?

I began hauling chemicals in the early 1980s, before placards made their appearance. Then, and still today, I found an extra challenge in the fact that I was dragging something dangerous down the road. I tried to rise to the challenge and did so successfully, I suppose — I’m still here to write about it, after all. I don’t know if that makes me a risk-taker or not, but I also do other things that some might consider risky.

I fly airplanes, I used to scuba dive, and I love getting up in front of a crowd to deliver a presentation. Many people view public speaking as the worst thing that could happen to them, short of suffocation. The risk is different, but it speaks to our willingness to tolerate exposure to situations that cause discomfort.

My life insurance agent gets a bit wound up about my flying and diving, but couldn’t have cared less about what I did for a living a few years ago. Which is strange, because statistically I stood a much greater chance of being killed on the job than while enjoying one of my pastimes.

I don’t have much of an appetite for unqualified risk. I wouldn’t knowingly take on a 60,000-foot-tall thundercloud in a tiny, 2,000-pound Piper Warrior. Way too risky.

I did, however, get up close and personal with a lot of chemicals that would chew the skin off my bones on contact, or burst into flames if you looked at them the wrong way. Those were supposed to be calculated risks. Risks I was prepared for, and trained to deal with. Like flying and scuba diving, I always tried to use my training to avoid situations that might require skills I didn’t have. That was how I managed risk.

There were people I worked with who didn’t understand the nature of risk. One chap, now departed, tried to repair a universal joint on the driveshaft turning a liquid-product pump. Rather than stop the pump, he elected to make the repair while the pump was running. The machine tore off both his arms and he bled to death under the truck.

Another, having decided to soldier on in a blizzard after dispatch had issued a stand-down order, figured he could continue the trip by following the barely visible yellow line along the edge of the highway. Doing so led him right down an exit ramp, across two lanes of traffic on the crossroad, and then down a steep bank on the opposite side of the road where he planted his truck in the middle of a swamp.

Why take risks like that? Haulin’ HAZMAT is a manageable risk. Do it right, and you won’t get bitten, which is really a metaphor for life itself. But some of us like to push the envelope just a little, and that’s OK as long as the risk is managed, too.