By Paul Cho
December luncheon meeting (12/06/10)
Wedge between the all day training on the Highway Safety Manual, this month’s luncheon meeting was held in the Old Redmond School Community Center in the gymnasium turned lunchroom turned auditorium. Each of the tables filled with transportation professionals debriefing on the morning’s training as well as greeting those that were only attending the luncheon portion. With a Taste of Spain buffet to warm the appetites, ITE Washington Section Vice President, Kevin Chang, introduced the speaker, John Milton (WSDOT) to talk about Risk Management for Transportation Professionals working in Washington State.
Mr. Milton began his presentation with an overview including:
- Steps in a Lawsuit in which he presented the process with which lawsuits are brought forth and addressed.
- Understanding Perspective and how it may be used against the professionals.
- Documentation in the Real World with quantifiable words and figures.
- Mitigating Risk in Documentation with just the facts and not opinions.
As a demonstration, a volunteer was selected from the attendees to simulate a trial or deposition experience. Mr. Milton began to ask questions that would have the transportation professional link their work with that of “safety.” At this point, the attorney can trap him in the corner requiring a yes or no response to the question is it safe. If answered “yes”, then the attorney would argue that it was not safe because their client died or was severely injured and if answered “no,” then the attorney had proven the liability. It would be a no-win situation
With a gloomy outlook for transportation professionals to design by fear, Mr. Hilton provided examples of ways to emphasize facts rather than opinions to mitigate the exposure to legal risks. For example, rather than describing an area as “icy conditions” the document can say “there was ice on the shoulder.” Instead of “striping was added to improve safety,” a better description would be “striping was added to provide additional driver information.”
We will never to be able to prevent every accident from happening nor from any more injury or deaths to occur on the roadways. But, we can be very mindful of the words that are based on opinions or can have a broad spectrum of meaning. By keeping to factual, quantifiable words and figures, we can continue to better service the community; including exposure to lawsuits won not on engineering deficiency but poor documentation.
A few moments of question and answers followed the presentation. Before dismissing the members, Dongho Chang (City of Everett) thanked the speaker and provided logistics for the after session of training.
