At its very basic level, a risk assessment is something that we all do multiple times a day.
For example, when we are cooking, we assess whether or not the food is sufficiently cooked through to not cause food poisoning. When we’re taking food from the oven, we’ve already assessed that the baking tins are hot and likely to burn so we use oven gloves or some other barrier to protect our skin. If you were to burn yourself or get ill, there’s no one to blame. You assessed the risk, an accident may have occurred, but no one other than yourself was responsible.
Think about every time you cross a road – you wait, you look both ways (assessing the risk of being hit by moving cars) and you cross when you think its safe to do.
Driving your car – what is the safe speed to travel? Is my car roadworthy? Can I safely turn across traffic at a junction? There are potentially more people affected if you have not assessed the risk correctly, but it is still something that we don’t consciously devote much brain time too.
In my next post I will explain more about why some risk assessments need to be written rather than just a quick mental assessment of risks.
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