Here's what I don't get about our safety culture/ORM

[Spaceman3750]

On the last SAREX I was on, I was leading a UDF team tasked to provide electronic search support to the ground team. Our search area was a local park. My UDF team was not leaving paved surfaces - this is an area normally frequented by joggers, etc.

When we ran the ORM numbers on the wing worksheet we came up with some very high ORM numbers. For what was literally a walk in the park.

I understand that training events have high ORM due to the fact that most participants are not fully trained, however, I don't see why we were getting such high numbers (120-130) to walk down a paved trail and take a DF reading. Furthermore, why did we perceive our risk to be any higher than that of the typical jogger or biker?

I attribute this to an overemphasis on safety. In reality, our risk on this sortie approached -0- - in fact, I think our risk was lower than the joggers because we were less likely to roll an ankle!

Thoughts?

[RADIOMAN015]

Does your wing have a standard Ground/UDF ORM worksheet that you must use 

The one I've seen in our wing on the ground side looks at weather conditions, whether it's light/dark out, and experience of members on the team.   I don't remember anything about search terrain but likely that's a big factor also.   That's one of the reason why there's not much CAP night time ground team exercise activity (in the woods off the path so to speak), because it becomes unacceptable risk and therefore, basically won't happen.
RM 

[Eclipse]

The ORM worksheets tend to skew high because they emphasize team experience and recent / regular activity.  You can get yourself
into the 100's in the top third because few members, especially in our wing, operate as a "team" on the regular basis required to keep those
numbers low.

There is also the possibility that you completed it incorrectly, or gave the team too high numbers for the reality of the situation, which is fairly common.

The worksheets do demonstrate, fairly well, how little things tend to pile-up on people, and can be significant on the whole.

Joggers aren't there to work, and they will quit the minute they get a toe cramp.  Also, I've known more than few who tend to ignore common sense in favor of the run and then risk becoming our "customers".