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For other uses, see Safety (disambiguation).
Warning signs, such as this one, can improve safety awareness.
Warning signs, such as this one, can improve safety awareness. A traffic warning sign is a type of Traffic sign that indicates a hazard ahead on the road

Safety is the state of being "safe" (from French sauf), the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The word error has different meanings and usages relative to how it is conceptually applied An accident is a specific identifiable unexpected unusual and unintended external event which occurs in a particular time and place without apparent or deliberate Injury or bodily injury is Damage or Harm caused to the Structure or function of the Body caused by an outside agent or This can take the form of being protected from the event or from exposure to something that causes health or economical losses. It can include protection of people or of possessions.

Contents

Meanings

There also are two slightly different meanings of safety, for example, home safety may indicate a building's ability to protect against external harm events (like weather, home invasion, etc), and the second that its internal installations (like appliances, stairs, etc) are safe (not dangerous or harmful) for its habitants.

Limitations

Safety can be limited in relation to some guarantee or a standard of insurance to the quality and unharmful function of an object or organization. A surety is a person who agrees to be responsible for the Debt or obligation of another Insurance, in Law and Economics, is a form of Risk management primarily used to hedge against the Risk of a contingent loss It is used in order to ensure that the object or organization will do only what it is meant to do.

It's important to realize that safety is relative. Eliminating all risk, if even possible, would be extremely difficult and very expensive. Risk is a Concept that denotes the precise probability of specific eventualities A safe situation is one where risks of injury or property damage are low and manageable.

Types of safety

It is important to distinguish between products that meet standards, that are safe, and those that merely feel safe. The highway safety community uses these terms:

Normative safety

Normative safety is a term used to describe products or designs that meet applicable design standards.

Substantive safety

Substantive safety means that the real-world safety history is favorable, whether or not standards are met.

Perceived safety

Perceived safety refers to the level of comfort of users. For example, traffic signals are perceived as safe, yet under some circumstances, they can increase traffic crashes at an intersection. Traffic roundabouts have a generally favorable safety record, yet often make drivers nervous.

Risks and responses

Safety is generally interpreted as implying a real and significant impact on risk of death, injury or damage to property. In response to perceived risks many interventions may be proposed with engineering responses and regulation being two of the most common.

Probably the most common individual response to perceived safety issues is insurance, which compensates for or provides restitution in the case of damage or loss.

System safety and reliability engineering

System safety and reliability engineering is an engineering discipline. The system safety concept calls for a Risk management Strategy based on identification analysis of hazards and application of remedial controls using a systems-based Continuous changes in technology, environmental regulation and public safety concerns make the analysis of complex safety-critical systems more and more demanding. A life-critical system or safety-critical system is a system whose failure or malfunction may result in Death or serious injury to people or

A common fallacy, for example among electrical engineers regarding structure power systems, is that safety issues can be readily deduced. In fact, safety issues have been discovered one by one, over more than a century in the case mentioned, in the work of many thousands of practitioners, and cannot be deduced by a single individual over a few decades. A knowledge of the literature, the standards and custom in a field is a critical part of safety engineering. A combination of theory and track record of practices is involved, and track record indicates some of the areas of theory that are relevant. (In the USA, persons with a state license in Professional Engineering in Electrical Engineering are expected to be competent in this regard, the foregoing notwithstanding, but most electrical engineers have no need of the license for their work. )

Safety is often seen as one of a group of related disciplines: quality, reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. (Availability is sometimes not mentioned, on the principle that it is a simple function of reliability and maintainability. ) These issues tend to determine the value of any work, and deficits in any of these areas are considered to result in a cost, beyond the cost of addressing the area in the first place; good management is then expected to minimize total cost.

Safety measures

Safety measures are activities and precautions taken to improve safety, i. e. reduce risk related to human health. Common safety measures include:

Standards organizations

A number of standards organizations exist that promulgate safety standards. These may be voluntary organizations or government agencies.

American National Standards Institute

A major American standards organization is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). A standards organization, standards body, standards development organization or SDO is any entity whose primary activities are developing coordinating Usually, members of a particular industry will voluntarily form a committee to study safety issues and propose standards. Those standards are then recommended to ANSI, which reviews and adopts them. Many government regulations require that products sold or used must comply with a particular ANSI standard.

Testing laboratories

Product safety testing, for the United States, is largely controlled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In addition, work-place related products come under the jurisdction of OSHA, which certifies independent testing companies as Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories (NRTL), see [1].

For other countries, there are many other organizations that have accreditation to test and/or submit test reports for safety certification. These are typically referred to as a Notified or Competent Body. The most common is the IECEE Certification Body Scheme, see [2]

Government agencies

Many government agencies set safety standards for matters under their jurisdiction, such as:

Non-US bodies

See also

External links

The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (U S CPSC is an independent agency of the U BSI Group, also known in its home market as the British Standards Institution (or BSI) is a multinational business services provider whose principal activity Established in 1919 the Canadian Standards Association (CSA is a not-for-profit association composed of representatives from government industry and Deutsches Institut für Normung eV ( DIN; in English, the German Institute for Standardization) is the German national organization for An accident is a specific identifiable unexpected unusual and unintended external event which occurs in a particular time and place without apparent or deliberate Air safety is a term encompassing the theory investigation and categorization of flight failures, and the prevention of such failures through regulation as well as through An aviation accident is defined in the International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 13 An aviation accident is defined in the International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 13 An aisle is in general a space for walking with rows of seats on either side or with rows of seats on one side and a wall on the other An arc flash (or arc blast event is a type of electrical explosion that results from a low impedance connection to ground or another voltage phase in an electrical system In common with most of Europe and North America Australian state parliaments have responded to the problem of workplace illness injury and death by enacting statutory standards regulating Bicycle safety is the use of practices designed to reduce risk associated with Cycling. Boating, the leisurely activity of traveling by Boat typically refers to the Recreational use of boats whether Power boats sail boats, or See also Baby transport An infant safety seat, a "child restraint system" or "restraint car seat" is a Restraint which is secured Toy safety is the practice of ensuring that Toys especially those made for children are safe usually through the application of set Safety standards. A poison control center ( PCC) or poison information center ( PIC) is a Medical facility that is able to provide immediate free and expert treatment Safe Kids USA is the United States' arm of the global network of Safe Kids Worldwide organizations based in Washington DC A product recall is a request to return to the maker a batch or an entire production run of a product usually due to the discovery of safety issues Door safety relates to prevention of Door -related Accidents Such accidents take place in various forms and in a number of locations ranging from car doors Explosives safety originated as a formal program in the US in the aftermath of World War I when several ammunition storage areas were destroyed in a series of Fire safety refers to precautions that are taken to prevent or reduce the likelihood of a Fire that may result in death injury or property damage alert those in a structure (For discussions on politics concerning firearms and gun safety see Gun politics. This article covers notable accidents involving nuclear devices and radioactive materials Motorcycle safety concerns many aspects of vehicle and equipment design as well as operator skill and training that are unique to Motorcycle riding Almost two-thirds of the 12 million people killed in road traffic crashes worldwide are Pedestrians. A security guard or security officer is usually a privately and formally employed person who is paid to protect Property, assets or people For non-business risks see Risk or the disambiguation page Risk analysis. Sailing ships were (and are frequently put in the way of difficult conditions whether by storm or combat and the crew frequently called upon to cope with accidents ranging from the parting Safety engineering is an applied science strongly related to Systems engineering and the subset System Safety Engineering Fail-safe or fail-secure describes a device or feature which in the event of failure, responds in a way that will cause no harm or at least a minimum of harm Fail-safe or fail-secure describes a device or feature which in the event of failure, responds in a way that will cause no harm or at least a minimum of harm ( is a Japanese term that means " fail-safing " "Foolproof" or "mistake-proofing" &mdash avoiding ( yokeru) inadvertent errors ( In Software Engineering, Software System Safety optimizes system safety in the design development use and maintenance of Software systems and their integration Category Safety statement is the name given to a document that outlines how a company or organisation manages their health and safety Security is the condition of being protected against danger loss and criminals Sports injuries are injuries that are caused by participation in a sporting event. Workplace safety is a category of Management responsibility in places of employment A material safety data sheet ( MSDS) is a form containing data regarding the properties of a particular substance Personal protective equipment (PPE refers to protective Clothing, Helmets, Goggles, or other garment designed to protect the wearer's body or An accident at work is defined as an external sudden unexpected unintended and violent event during the execution of work or arising out of it which causes damage to the Health Occupational safety and health is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the Safety, Health and welfare of people engaged in A criticality accident, sometimes referred to as an excursion or a power excursion, occurs when a Nuclear chain reaction accidentally occurs in Fissile

Dictionary

safety

-noun

  1. The condition or feeling of being safe; security; certainty.
  2. A mechanism on a weapon or dangerous equipment designed to prevent accidental firing.
  3. (American football) When a player is either tackled in or loses the ball out of his team's own end zone resulting in two points for the opposite team.
  4. (American football) Any of the defensive players who are in position furthest from the line of scrimmage and whose responsibility is to defend against passes as well as to be the tacklers of last resort.
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