Interesting note

There's been a spate of deaths in the SAF recently.

The first involved a member of the Special Ops Force. That was on 15 Jun 05.
The second involved a Warrant Officer. That was on 22 Jun 05.
The third was a case of a senior instructor at Basic Military Training Centre over at Pulau Tekong. That was on 29 Jun 05.

The fourth and most recent case involved another commando who fell 20 metres down during heli-rappelling. That was on 13 July 05.

Know what is the most unlikely coincidence? It all happened on a Wednesday.

There were speculations going around by this time about Black Wednesday for SAF.

One of the Red Lions was seriously injured after a troubled descent followed by an awkward landing. That was not a Wednesday. But then again, the Red Lion did not die *touch wood*

Otherwise, it could have been 3 deaths in a month for the Best Unit in the Army.

Seriously, that term was used when the British Pound was dragged out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 16 1992 after suffering round after round of heavy blows - left, right and centre - from speculative attacks.

Safety Time Out was called. A 2-day review of all procedures and processes went underway.

It is never easy to hear about training-related deaths. Especially so when they appear so unrelated and isolated in nature. Yet all were from the same organisation.

If we look at such deaths as the end result of errors, all we can do is to learn if they were systematic or random errors.

Systematic errors are harder to spot but can be minimised and managed with proper safety measures in place.

Random errors are easier to spot but really hard to minimise. Conditions are dynamic in the training environment. And to cope with these conditions can sometimes get really difficult.

Training related deaths are usually a series of random errors. This will be followed by a poorly assessed risk element that collapses at the weight of the series of random errors. Just before death occurs, it is a compounded error that is hard to learn from.