Can a risk assessment be undertaken on this incident and what are the controls?

Police officer thrown from horse

October 30, 2006 08:53am
Article from: AAP

A MOUNTED police officer was injured when his horse reared up and threw him in central Melbourne this morning.

The officer was patrolling Southbank Boulevard about 8.50am (AEDT) when the acident happened, a Victoria Police spokeswoman said.

The officer suffered shoulder injuries.

This is an unusual event but something that could occur and has (don't have the figures on how many police officers fall off horses).

So for legislative purposes we have identified the hazard as a fall from a horse.

What would the risks be? Doesn't really matter in regards to legislative purposes we have identified a risk of injury at least so it must be controlled.

For prioritising in a big organisation though we might say there is a high likelihood of this occuring as they are working with animals that are unpredictable to an extent (they are highlighly trained).

As for cosequences though that could be a bit tricky in this situation. If we take the worst case scenario, it would start with serious injury, but what if the officer fell while controlling a violent crowd? It could be far worse, even death.

So now we have a hazard that is assessed as a high to very high risk and it needs to be controlled to comply with legislative requirements.

Elimination. The mounted police serve a vital role in public control issues and without them the risk of injury and death to people would be much higher, so it's obvious we cannot elimate them. It would be nice if we could eliminate the need to use them but that is not going to happen in the immediate future so that's out too.

Substitution. Again there is nothing to substitute the important role the mounted police provide without compromising the safety of the public they serve to protect.

Engineering. There could be circumstances that barriers and other crowd control measures be implimented into a venue or area of concern, this would need to be assessed on individual situtations and would not eliminate the need to use the mounted police for the majority of circumstances.

Administration. I believe the police have already covered the area of behavioural controls with policies and procedures implemented for all percievable circumstances that could arise. There will be a need for procedures if new PPE is advised.

Personal Protective Equipment. Ah my least favourite control measure but in this incident after working through the hierarchy of controls it is the only percievable control left that may offer further protection to the officers.

As the injury that resulted from this incident are shoulder injuries, that will be our focuss for controls, utilising PPE as the control option. And in this case as is the case with horse racing jockeys, the motorcycle racing industry already has many options available. Full body armour might not be required but surely some shoulder protection and as there could be a risk to the spine with this sort of incident a spine protector modified to suit horse riding should also be adopted.

Just taking you through the heirachy as there are not many workplace risks that I believe need to adopt PPE or Procedures but this incident is a good example of where PPE could provide useful in reducing the risks as far as practical.

Regards
Daniel