The Halo, Formula 1, and changing public perceptions of Health and Safety.
By Laura Aucott Associate Director at HSE Recruitment and Executive Network Group
I
don’t know if any of my connections are particularly F1 fans (and let’s be honest I know very little about the sport, I am just coerced to watch it by my Lewis Hamilton obsessed husband) but last weekend’s race seemed to me the perfect display of how valuable Health and Safety really can be in genuine life or death situations – and really showed how interesting the dichotomy is between public perception of safety issues and the reality.
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insight S A F E R H I G H WAY S M A G A Z I N E saferhighways.co.uk
So first things first – what happened? At last weekend’s F1 race at Silverstone, two dramatic crashes took place. One between Zhou Guanyu, George Russell, and Pierre Gasly, which sent Alfa Romeo driver Zhou crashing dramatically into the barriers – narrowly missing several spectators by the looks of it. The second crash between Sebastian Vettel and Alex Albon meant Albon spun dramatically colliding with a further driver Yuki Tsunoda. If you haven’t watched this footage yet you can take a look at Zhou’s dramatic crash at: https://youtu.be/B2XHq9d4OWI From the looks of the video it was a miracle that Zhou was able to walk away unscathed – but actually this was down to an extremely well designed safety intervention.
