[ratdude747]

My team won the safety award w/o ridiculous stuff. We got the award for:

1. requiring all members and mentors to pass a safety test before build season.
2. building a battery charging station that had outlets wired to industrial wiring codes and using it as the sole power source in the pits.
3. using "barbie" band-aids to remind people of their accident and increase safety accountability.

we never did this to win the award, we did it to be safe. perhaps attitude will be the new deciding factor... being safe to be safe is the goal, not being safe to win an award.

I personally believe the safety tokens was a bad system. you are asking people to judge safety from a distance where determining safety is difficult at best. this also assumes people know what is and isn't safe... i know that many teams at boilermaker regional had no idea on the new safety rules.

one team asked me for a soldering butane torch to do some battery cables... he did not know that open flames are illegal this year nor did he know leaded solder was a no-no. In the spirit of GP, I came over to his pit with my teams lead free solder and proper soldering tools and helped him legally solder the wires he needed soldered.

I really think that safety judges should consider motives and true effectiveness of a team's attempts to be safe. To me, safety is not just a skill, but a way of life.