National Park Service

Trail Safe Lesson 1 - Introduction

Summary

Operational Leadership does not replace our existing occupational and safety and health program for the trail, it enhances it by helping us understand human limitations.

Overview

TRAIL SAFE! is a unique safety training program designed specifically for National Park Service (NPS) Trail Volunteers but is useful to everyone! It's based upon NPS Operational Leadership Training, where the Human Factor of safety is explored. Trail Safe! captures the core learning objectives of the 16 hour Operational Leadership course while allowing volunteers to learn from their own homes on-line.

The Trail Safe! series is found below in eight video lessons, each ranging in length from 18 to 40 minutes long. Viewing the entire eight lesson series will take approximately three hours. Watch them over the course of multiple days, or "binge watch" the entire series in three hours—it's up to you—but please watch them in numeric order from Lesson 1 through Lesson 8.

Lesson 1

Hello and welcome to Trail Safe. This series of self-study power-point presentations was designed specifically for you, the National parks Service trail volunteer. Operational Leadership is a training tool that's used by the NPS which focuses on human factors as part of an overall comprehensive safety program beyond the standard safety policies and practices that many us already use and are familiar with. In other words, NPS Operational Leadership adds a behavioral component to the safety program and explains what goes into our decision making processes. Understanding human behavior is key to helping adults make better safety decisions in real-time environments. Operational Leadership does not replace our existing occupational and safety and health program for the trail, it enhances it by helping us understand human limitations.

Trail Types Covered

General. All trail types are relevant.