We’ve all done it. Sneaked a peek at an incoming text while driving. Punched in a quick reply with one hand on the wheel—our eyes dancing from screen to road as we hurry our message along as quickly as we hurry home. It’s no big deal, right? Just one text?

This workplace safety article was co-written by Ryan Roark, the former director of operations, AkzoNobel Surface Chemistry, and was previously published in the July 2014 issue of Safety+Health magazine.

 In a perfect world, safety would be easy. Leaders would look at safety incident reporting and identify and remove the exposures and hazards that cause them. They would improve behavioral reliability and safety by making sure everyone followed the rules. But real life is not so simple. The live workplace is always changing—making it critical that employees be able to detect and respond to real-time changes in risk.