# Solved by engineers, not activists

Industrial safety would improve more if we showed how safety supports profits, rather than framing safety and profits as conflicting.

Tankers spill nowadays 98% less oil than they spilled in the 1970s ([source](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/quantity-oil-spills)).

A fantastic result driven by… whom exactly? Activists or engineers?

I know it's not a true dichotomy: after all, a lot of what activists do is push for new regulations, which engineers then implement by changing machines and processes. That said, the common narrative is that activists pushed for sturdier ships and stronger accountability, and that these are what caused the remarkable 98% improvement. But while these certainly helped, much of the reduction came from preventing accidents in the first place, through better navigation systems, radar, electronic charts, traffic separation schemes and weather routing, as well as better processes such as maintenance routines, cargo-handling procedures, crew training and inspection systems.

Crucially, most of these improvements were not developed because activists demanded them or because oil-spill regulations forced companies to adopt them. They were developed because they made shipping more profitable. Collisions, bad weather, corrosion, leaks, delays, and unreliable navigation are expensive even before anyone imposes a fine. Engineers had strong reasons to develop better radar, navigation systems, electronic charts, weather routing, maintenance routines, and operating procedures even in a world without environmental activists.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that fines and prosecution are useless, not at all. They are important for two reasons: first, they provide an additional incentive to improve safety; second, they can remove reckless or persistently negligent actors from positions where they can cause harm. That said, and this is the core point, safety is already generally aligned with profit motives rather than conflicting with them. In fact, **I strongly believe that we would improve industrial safety more by emphasizing how safety is aligned with profits, and explaining why, rather than by pushing the narrative that safety and profits conflict, a narrative that, if accepted, implicitly pushes corporate executives who don't know better to see safety as a cost to minimize rather than as a profit driver to increase.**

I long for a world where everyone understands that safety is generally a profit driver, and that if they spotted someone skipping on safety, their reaction would be "You're stupid, and you're hurting profits" rather than "You're greedy and trying to maximize profits."

### **FAQ: Is safety truly a profit driver?**

Generally. Not always, obviously, and only up to a point (diminishing returns are a thing), but in most practical cases, yes. If we believe otherwise, it's often because we are bad at computing the costs of non-safety.

For example, what does it cost an employer when a machine injures an employee? There is the lost production while the machine is stopped, the lower productivity of the replacement worker, paid sick leave for the injured employee, the cost of hiring and onboarding a replacement, higher insurance costs, the time employees and managers spend investigating the incident and filing reports, possible lawsuit-related costs, and even higher recruitment and salary costs if fewer people are willing to work in an unsafe environment.

The point is that lack of safety is more expensive than many think. And the more we underestimate the cost of non-safety, the more likely we are to see safety as a cost to minimize rather than as a tool to reduce costs.

Moreover, improving safety often improves operational excellence as a byproduct: fewer defects, delays, mistakes, misunderstandings, and so on. For example, radars and weather routing not only reduce collisions but also make shipping faster and more reliable. As another example, training supervisors to get workers to use gloves and helmets also teaches those supervisors how to establish other habits that improve productivity (as I say, [risk management is a competitive advantage](https://luca-dellanna.com/posts/risk-management-competitive-advantage)). Again, the more we underestimate how much investing in safety improves operations, the more we underestimate how aligned safety and profits are.