If you’ve had the pleasure or displeasure of effectively being forced to watch WWE wrestling over the years because the kids just love it so much, you surely must have noticed how their safety disclaimer changed over the years from “Don’t try this at home” to simply “Don’t try this!” This is because of possible interpretation issues, as silly as it may sound, with some kids effectively “trying this” at a friend’s house or at school because that’s not “trying it at home” as the warning read.

That’s basically the motivation and inspiration behind the headline of this post in that we wanted to cover our bases in case anyone was feeling particularly silly and interpreted our message in one of two possible ways.

So the message is that when you go on holiday, the same vigilance you always practice in your daily, domestic living environment should be taken with you and applied at your holiday destination, while on the other end of the interpretation spectrum what we’re simply saying is that your vigilance shouldn’t in itself go on holiday (you shouldn’t take a holiday from being vigilant).

This comes in line with some rather concerning holiday incidents of the fatal kind, particularly with regards to one of Britain’s favourite forms of holidaying, that being camping and/or caravanning.

The main culprit? Carbon monoxide…

In our regular home setting we tend to take for granted some of the safety solutions provided by the likes of CORGI HomePlan with regards to home heating, plumbing, drainage, electrics, etc, with gas heating in particular coming into focus. Something as seemingly insignificant as leaving your carbon monoxide detector behind can result in some rather unfortunate circumstances in which fatalities can occur, a decision which would naturally be driven by the consideration that while you’re out camping, generally you’ll be interacting with the outdoors. Campers and caravanners tend to forget however that it’s very likely they’ll want to cook their food or heat some water “indoors”, in the confined spaces of the tents they pitch and of their caravans.

And that’s where the true danger of carbon monoxide comes into effect because without a carbon monoxide detector, it’s virtually impossible to detect a leakage since the gas is odourless, colourless and tasteless. Basically you have no way of knowing that there’s a leakage unless you have a detector at hand, which is more than just a handy tool and should rather be an integral part of every camping and caravanning safety kit.

In keeping with the holiday spirit however, it’s simply a matter of maintaining the same vigilance you’d maintain in any other environment so that there’s less of a chance of something going wrong. Should something go wrong as well, there should be a contingency plan – a contingency plan which can only be effected if you’re adequately prepared, such as through the mentioned carbon monoxide detector.

That would mean you’d also need to have a first-aid kit at hand, along with a fire extinguisher to be able to deal with issues that flare up before they get out of hand.