Safety Award: What would you like to see?

[Cory]

The best thing that could happen to the safety award is for it to go away.

Seriously, it's the most pointless award ever. The safety advisors often offer asinine advice. They're most concerned with finding where you keep your battery spill kit and fire extinguisher and MSDS sheets for loctite and marine grease. They spend more time policing teams for expanding one microinch outside of their pits than they do actually trying to correct unsafe behavior. I can't count how many times we've been told to wear gloves while doing something that would become far more dangerous if wearing gloves.

If a battery spills I'm going to get out of the way and let a professional handle it. If there's a fire I'm going to get out of the way and let a professional handle it (at work I had to take fire extinguisher training and the #1 thing they stressed was to not use the fire extinguisher...call 911 and get the hell out of dodge). I don't need MSDS sheets for the stuff in my pit because I'm not dumb enough to eat loctite or squirt it in my eyes.

The conduct of teams vying for the safety award is the only thing more annoying than the safety advisors. Hearing "ROBOT!!!!!!!" blasted into my ear drums every 30 seconds is not productive. It's turned into a competition of "who can have the most ridiculous safety stuff" and has nothing to do with actual safe behavior. One team had a defibrillator and was touting that their whole team was AED certified...How many thousands of dollars did that cost, for something which has nearly no practical value? (almost all venues would be equipped with one anyways, as would the paramedics which are present at every event). Again, if I was having a heart attack, I want the paramedics helping me, not some 15 year old kid, even if there's no way for it to inadvertently shock me.

The whole award is a complete sham and does not promote actual safety whatsoever. It's just an opportunity for teams to annoy the living daylights out of everyone else.