The Importance of Safety Awareness in Automotive Repair Businesses

In the realm of business operations, one can paraphrase a famous quote from Tolstoy: profitable enterprises are all alike; every unprofitable enterprise is unprofitable in its own way. Some causes of losses creep up like boiling frogs, accumulating over time until recovery is impossible; others destroy businesses like landslides or tsunamis, plunging them into irreversible situations in an instant. For today's automotive repair businesses, while making a profit is crucial, prioritizing risk prevention and safety awareness is paramount. 1. From Repair Shops to 4S Stores, Safety Incidents Happen in an Instant In recent years, numerous fire incidents have occurred in automotive repair businesses, showing a frightening upward trend. Many of these accidents have resulted in injuries and severe economic consequences, with lengthy follow-up processes. For instance, on February 16, 2025, a fire broke out at an auto repair shop in Shuinan Town, Zizhong County, Neijiang City, Sichuan Province. At the time, a master and his apprentice were working on a fuel vehicle when it suddenly caught fire. The master yelled for the apprentice to run outside, but the 20-year-old apprentice, possibly trying to find water to extinguish the fire, ran back inside. Ultimately, the fire grew, and the apprentice could not escape, while the master was injured while attempting to rescue him. On March 30, 2025, a fire occurred at the GAC Toyota 4S store at 87 Minzhuang Road, Haidian District, Beijing, resulting in one death. The fire was caused by welding sparks igniting flammable materials below during the construction process. On June 10, 2025, a severe thermal runaway incident occurred at a Changan 4S store in Nantong, Jiangsu, involving a dark blue new energy SUV. While the vehicle was lifted on a hoist, its battery pack started to emit flames. Multiple repair personnel attempted to extinguish the fire using extinguishers, but under the high temperatures and continuous battery combustion, ordinary extinguishers proved ineffective. Fortunately, although the vehicle was damaged, no injuries occurred. These cases illustrate that automotive repair businesses, whether in rural towns or busy city centers, small shops or mainstream 4S stores, can face safety incidents if management is lacking. Safety hazards lie in wait like assassins in dark corners, ready to strike at any moment. Currently, much of the online content, videos, and training related to automotive repair focus on how to attract traffic and convert it into sales. While these are important, even with immense traffic, effective internal management is necessary to capitalize on it. Otherwise, a business risks becoming infamous. This largely depends on the 6S management of the shop, with the last S—safety—being the most crucial. 2. Weak Awareness and Insufficient Checks: The Lethal Truth Behind Safety Incidents Safety management must be integrated into the overall planning of a company's establishment, with high importance placed on both hardware and software construction. However, in reality, due to the low probability of major personnel injury events, this is often overlooked, whether intentionally or not. For automotive repair shops, the most significant safety threat may be fires. For example, in the aforementioned fire incident in Sichuan, during repairs that may involve fuel leaks, standard procedures require disconnecting the vehicle's battery, prohibiting smoking and flammable materials on-site, ensuring good ventilation, using explosion-proof tools, and having fire extinguishers readily available. Honestly, except for disconnecting the battery, achieving these other hardware conditions at a small master-apprentice shop is quite difficult. Had they had even one functioning fire extinguisher, the disaster could have been avoided. For social repair shops, especially small family-run or master-apprentice operations, there are unavoidable limitations in management capability and financial resources, leading to gaps in systems, hardware, and training. If luck holds and nothing happens over the years, they may remain safe; however, if a safety incident occurs, the consequences can be devastating. As for the Toyota 4S store, if they had implemented the "cleaning and cleanliness" S’s in their daily routine, they could have mitigated the risks of falling welding sparks. Unlike ordinary repair shops, mainstream brand 4S stores can implement comprehensive safety measures. The only weakness lies in the execution and enforcement of those measures. Experiments have shown that the temperature of welding sparks can reach over 1000°C, maintaining a high temperature of 657.5°C even after dropping to the ground. For example, if welding slag falls onto cardboard used for packaging parts, it can ignite within 15 seconds; if it falls onto cotton soaked in fuel or oil, ignition can occur in under 7 seconds, especially if there’s a breeze. Although the fire was attributed to "failure to promptly clean flammable materials" and "failure to maintain a clean work site," the inability to properly plan and build a "three-waste zone" made cleaning and cleanliness impossible. As for the fire at the Changan 4S store in Nantong, the official response stated that the fire was initially determined to be caused by an "operational error by repair personnel." Specifically, an incorrect operation during repairs led to a high-voltage short circuit in the power battery, resulting in the fire. New energy vehicle power batteries typically operate around 400 volts, with some performance-focused models reaching over 800 volts. In the case of a 400-volt short circuit, if a metal conductor is accidentally introduced, the temperature of that conductor can reach around 400 degrees within 10-15 seconds. If an arc forms, temperatures can soar to 2500-4000 degrees, melting ordinary metals. During electrical repairs on new energy vehicles, disconnecting the battery and ensuring the vehicle's power is off is crucial. Technicians must wait several minutes to ensure the high-voltage system is fully de-energized and properly follow the necessary safety steps. However, the maintenance procedures for new energy vehicles remain relatively new, and widespread recognition of training and practical operations has not yet formed. Fires in new energy vehicles are particularly challenging to extinguish due to rapid temperature increases, making them difficult to manage with standard firefighting methods. In conclusion, automotive repair businesses face a variety of serious safety risks beyond just fires, including mechanical injuries, chemical hazards, etc. Safety management can be divided into prevention, handling, and aftermath, with a primary focus on prevention. This necessitates the establishment of safety-related systems, hardware guarantees, and personnel training. Each profit gained from automotive repair cannot exceed the value of the vehicle itself, yet the compensation for safety-related incidents can have no upper limit.