In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Mike Fears, who describes himself as a recovering academic and has more than 20 years of experience in occupational health and safety across multiple industries.

This is a fascinating deep dive into New View Safety: its principles, how it developed, its originality and, most importantly, whether it improves safety outcomes.

Mike evaluates the core tenets of this approach to help us uncover the validity of maxims such as ‘error is normal’, ‘blame fixes nothing’ and ‘workers should decide how work is done’. His research findings help us separate unrealistic assertions from useful applications. But context and nuance are always key!

This episode gives safety professionals a balanced and measured perspective on New View Safety, encouraging thoughtful application of its ideas - rather than uncritical adoption or rejection.

Learn more about Mike’s work: The Recovering Academic

Recommended reading:

Fears, M. R. (2025). The promise and problems of the "New View" of Safety. Vegetation Manager Magazine, 24 October 2025;18-20. 

Fears M.R. (2024). 349 Pushing the right buttons: creating conditions for developing personal motivation towards safe behaviours. Injury Prevention; 30: A74.

Fears M.R. (2024). 698 The promise and problems with the “new view” of safety: weaknesses, limitations, and suggestions for further research. Injury Prevention; 30: A145. 

Cooper, M. (2022). The emperor has no clothes: A critique of Safety-II. Safety Science, 152, 105047. 

Mike Fears on LinkedIn: Mike Fears – LinkedIn Profile 

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