End Safety Theater

[hzdbl5]

For what it's worth, we push to win the safety award and are very pleased when we do. The reason is that 4 years ago one of our students decided that was something she wanted to take charge of. She's since left the team and another student has picked up and run with it.

We have occasionally put up a silly safety goggles poster, but our work focuses on ensuring we have our MSDS in order, making first aid kits and fire extinguishers readily available in the pit areas, having all of the students and mentors on our team certified in first aid, etc. We also actively encourage teams that don't have a safety program in place and are happy to share our materials with them.

Bottom line, we pursue the safety award because we had a couple of students who thought it was important to do so.

And for the record, we lost the safety award at one event last year when one of the safety judges deliberately stepped in front of our drive team who was transporting our robot and was upset when our kids simply said, "excuse us, please" rather than shouting "ROBOT!".