Day 127 - 23 May 95 - Page 47


     
     1        The three together mean that it is an important part of
     2        your business.
     3
     4   Q.   Do you see any conflict or tension between those three
     5        considerations so far as are you concerned?
     6        A.  There is no conflict at all.  They all work together.
     7
     8   Q.   However much it may cost in pounds, shillings and pence to
     9        achieve what you are seeking?
    10        A.  Well, there is a balance there, in that in spending
    11        money on safety you save money on the other side of it,
    12        accidents and damage.  So, of course, you would not throw
    13        thousands of pounds at something that would be very low
    14        risk, but you would spend a lot of money at things that are
    15        higher risk.  Again it comes back to this balancing and
    16        what is reasonably practical.
    17
    18   Q.   This is something we will come back to in a little more
    19        detail later on, but given that your company runs a
    20        fast-food business which is work intensive at the bottom
    21        end in the restaurant, do you realistically believe that
    22        there is any way in which you can actually prevent
    23        accidents, burns, cuts, trips from happening at all?
    24        A.  It would be a nice idea to say that one day we could
    25        prevent all accidents completely, but in the real world it
    26        is just not going to happen.  Our aim is preventing the
    27        more serious accidents; certainly that will have an
    28        knock-on effect in preventing some of the minor ones as
    29        well, but it would just be a practical impossibility.  Just
    30        think of yourselves at home, how many times at home do you
    31        cut your finger with a knife or burn yourself and so
    32        forth?  It is just a fact of being a human being I am
    33        afraid.
    34
    35   Q.   If you look at the bottom part of this page 156 you see
    36        that the Americans have classified accidents in the
    37        restaurants by different kinds of accidents, different
    38        causes of accidents, different places, so on and so forth,
    39        do you see that, and also by severity?
    40        A.  Yes.
    41
    42   Q.   Are you able to do that kind of classification with the
    43        information you have got in this country, do you think?
    44        A.  We would be able to do that.  I seem to remember quite
    45        a long time ago I did have a go at comparing.  There is no
    46        doubt that ours would come out slightly differently,
    47        particularly in terms of the severity because, as
    48        I understand this, this includes total loss, so it is
    49        injury as well as the costs side.  As I said before, ours
    50        really would be focused more on the degree of injury 
    51        because the cost side in terms of claim is a lot less.  So 
    52        I would expect our severities to be different.  Yes, 
    53        I would expect the frequencies to be slightly different as
    54        well.  It is the other side of the world; you would not
    55        expect them to be exactly the same.
    56
    57   Q.   Then if you would like to there -- is nothing else I want
    58        to ask you about in this section.  One sees the section on
    59        safety (it includes fire precautions) runs through to page
    60        172 of the file.  Can you put that file away, please, and

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