FASTER, BETTER, SAFER –
TODAY’S SAFETY QC CHALLENGE
A “seen-it-all perspective and up-coaching”
By Mark J. Rice, Esq.
When I was eight years old, in California, I rode
an orange-gold colored Schwinn one-speed, the
one with the white banana seat and high handlebars.
When I got a flat, I’d give a nod to the mechanic at the local
Chevron Station to go into the service bay where a metal bench
had a pull-out device to strap down the flat tire like a torniquet,
after putting the tire into a small bucket of water, to see the location
of the leak from where the air bubbles emerged. Sometimes,
it was the gas station owner himself, Lou Pizzio, smoking a Camel,
brawny and bald, who would give the “go ahead kid” nod. It was
self-serve, and I felt big and competent in being able to fix my own
bike tire at Lou’s garage. Lou played the accordion at night with his
large family – I was friends with his son – but knew this was just a
“neighbor kid” privilege of the ‘60s.
Not so, of course, today. We live in a world surrounded by regulation,
rules, fears, triple-downs on safety protocols, helicoptering,
red tape, triplicate forms on everything as if forms equal safety
without more. These are often grotesquely antiquated or ill-fitted
98 | ISSUE 3 2021 www.piledrivers.org
/www.piledrivers.org
