Dan Jacklin, Health and Safety Consultant
Morning coffee and the great outdoors
My early-morning routine consists of a quick breakfast followed by coffee in one hand and current affairs in the other. I read a broad range of articles in the morning, typically for 1-2 hours, accompanied by nursing that one (now cold) coffee.
During COVID I have worked from home, but most of my working life I’ve roamed the UK and abroad. I say in jest, that I know hotel staff better than my neighbors, but there is a lot of truth in that. Now teaching and meetings have moved online, I expect my neighbors may hear a few water safety war stories.
I enjoy getting out to pools, water parks, and open water either to visit, train, or for work. I still make the timed swim on my lifeguard exam; a decade on from my first steps onto poolside; although judo, not swimming, is to thank for my fitness these days.
What does a water safety expert witness do?
Whilst it can involve riding waterslides to test how fast they will go, most of the work is more sobering than that. My evenings and weekends are often knee-deep in European standards, large electronic disclosure files, and the latest academic papers. Tragically, it also includes watching an individual’s final moments again and again on CCTV in order to put together an accurate chronology of events; especially when the time markers on different cameras don’t match up.
The vast majority of lifeguard standards, water safety, and operational guidance in my work is not covered by specific legislation. It sits within a complex web of industry, national, and international standards; some underpinned by good academic research, some by outdated research, and the majority by little academic research at all.
My job includes criminal and civil work. Cases include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, or HSWA 1974 offences involving companies and individuals. Civil claims may be for personal injury or unfair dismissal. My work is often across jurisdictions, primarily in tourist hotspots outside the UK.
I may be advising on waterslides, aquaparks, lifeguard conduct or training, watersports, pools, or the safety aspects of technology, such as automated drowning detection, wave machines, or inland surfing.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and in my experience, the whole community is left in mourning when an adult or child drowns. What sparked my interest in water safety was the operational experience of rebuilding an organization’s safety system following a fatal drowning accident. What has sustained my interest is a desire to ensure the global growth of watersports (which is booming) is successful; and a key part of that is ensuring it is safe.
Day in court
Law was my first and second degree and in 2021, I hope to be called to the Bar. Having sat behind counsel and marshalled judges, attending court to be cross-examined certainly focusses the mind and a healthy anxiety is absolutely present. This experience has contextualized my expert work, enabling me to view it from different perspectives. It has humanized the litigation process, which can appear alien and remote when you begin as an expert.
A key duty of a barrister is to promote fearlessly the best interests of their client, but it is important to remember that all parties present are carrying out the respective function this adversarial litigation process requires of them, and not to take tough questions personally.
There is enough complexity in litigation without the expert adding to it. When I started expert work, I conceptualized its function as The Three R’s: Roadmap, Reasons, and Results. In civil cases, I provide a roadmap through the technical aspects of the factual evidence, sufficient for the court to evaluate and make findings on the questions of law and fact. But it is also to support your instructing solicitor and counsel to make strategic decisions long before the door of court. I give my opinion on where that roadmap leads, but the greater value it provides is to “articulate the working out” rather than the destination. The destination will invariably turn on how the judge finds the facts and your roadmap should make the judge’s job easier.
Experts make mistakes, just as judges, barristers, and witnesses do. Your attitude to the work is a vital mitigation. As an expert, it is not about winning. It is about reducing the issues through consensus. Be clear, but don’t over-simplify. If it were simple, expert evidence wouldn’t be needed. The judge or jury can see from the video where the lifeguard was standing, and my view on that is no more expert than theirs.
Challenge and reward
Mercifully, UK fatal drowning accidents are in decline with less than 700 in 2019. Every death is a tragedy, but the decline in fatal outcomes corresponds with a proportionate increase in non-fatal outcomes, including those with lifechanging injuries.
Most accident types are in decline, but our societal acceptance of risk has simply adjusted, and the law has followed. I have recently published a collection of drowning and waterslide cases. In the early-1900s, death caused by accidentally straying into deep water was often recorded as ‘suicide by drowning’ and no more was asked. Thankfully, our understanding has matured, and rightly more is asked and expected of the risks we accept in 2021.
The impact of drowning or serious injury is a raw and sobering event for all involved. The psychological impact rarely receives legal attention, but it is felt by the individual, their family, the lifeguards, and members of the public for many years – few of which receive adequate support. It is a delicate situation and I advise drafting the report in a language you could sit one-to-one with either party, the family, or the other expert and read aloud without alteration.
An expert has two day-jobs
Work outside the expert witness role goes beyond legal compliance. If you are in the business of selling fun experiences, the role of safety management is to engineer repeatably safe and fun experiences which account for intended and unintended guest behaviours at significant scale. That’s how you sustainably scale selling fun. We owe it to guests to take proactive responsibility in finding creative and cost-effective solutions. The creative solutions of 2020 will be the standard practices of 2040 if history repeats.
When litigation concludes, often many years later, I consolidate how changes might prevent similar accidents. My committee and advice work to sector bodies helps bring these improvements to life. Whatever the outcome of the litigation, someone was harmed and more, invariably, can and should be done.
Sleeping easy
In a day, you can only achieve so much, and my expert work reveals many gaps in my field which I would love to solve, but often lack the time. You need a team of people to solve these problems if you are to sleep easy at night.
The work is a vocation, a marathon, not a sprint. If you manage your wellbeing, you can make a considerable difference inside and outside your expert work. If you reach that place in your work, then it no longer matters that your morning coffee is cold, because your work is enough to wake you up and get going.