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Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

Folks frequently underestimate the danger that we are exposed to in daily life, and this shows it. As a mechanical engineer who used to frequent r/watchpeopledie before it was closed I have immense respect for powerful, sharp or fast/heavy objects; and abundant caution towards things I am unfamiliar with (eg chemicals).

I sometimes wish some videos/cases of commonly used products causing accidents were taught in school/uni. The vast majority of people have no idea how dangerous an escalator can be.

(If you're downvoting me, could you tell me why? If there's something inaccurate in my post I'd then correct it as I've done in the past.)

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The vast majority of people have no idea how dangerous a simple stepladder can be. One day I plucked my 75 year old neighbor off one whilst trying to one-handedly use a chainsaw (that a fit adult would have a problem handling with two hands, so forget about one) whilst holding on to the branch that he was cutting through. It took some convincing to get him to come down. They don't make that particular brand anymore this guy had lived through so much that I don't think he thought what he was doing was dangerous at all, but there really was no way that would have ended well. No safety gear, nothing at all, and a chainsaw so old that it didn't have a chain brake...

Very similar experience with my mid-70’s neighbor. I talked him down off the ladder more times than I can count. Sometimes he even had a glass of bourbon in one hand.

I really loved that guy. He died a few years ago after a series of strokes. He had worked his whole life in a paper factory at a time when 'personal protection' had entirely different connotations and vats with acid were large and open and real men bleached the paper for the cardboard with utter disregard for their own health.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_Triton

So I can see some of what made him do these things (with alarming regularity I might add). His name was Jakob, which is a traditional Dutch version of my own and right after I moved there we hit it off as if we'd known each other for years, I still don't know why. When the front gable of his house became too dangerous the whole neighborhood chipped in with materials and work and we built him a new front for his house for a ridiculously low budget, which was both a fun project and made everybody on the street that much closer to each other.

I'd bet that if we could have gotten them together your neighbor and my neighbor would be able to talk for hours :) These old-timers are interesting, they all have their stories and it is definitely worth making time for them.

Just a few moments reading this should sober people up [1].

It should be a weekly or monthly practice on any job site to review the recent additions and think about how you might change or review your own safety standards to avoid them.

https://www.osha.gov/fatalities

Wow. I could have easily been on a list like that a couple of times, one that stands out for me because I never saw it coming was uncoupling a loaded trailer that had 50 Kg on the balance when coupling it (which is a pretty safe amount, not too much, not too light). The load had shifted just a little bit backwards and after releasing the latch on the hitch if absolutely zoomed upwards. It missed me by a very small (uncomfortably small) fraction of an inch and if I had stood another 2" closer to the hitch it would have hit me full on. Very scary. The chains with which the machine on the back had been secured had gone a bit slack and the drive apparently was enough to shift the center of gravity to just behind the axle, that's a mistake I will never make again, always support a trailer front and back if you have to uncouple while it is still loaded.

A lot of crushed, fell and electrocuted. All of them preventable I'm sure... unfortunate.

The vast bulk of people that end up in the ER or the morgue are there for reasons that are more often than not just silly. The list of near misses is probably 10 times longer.

On my list of near misses:

- the trailer incident above (but not a scratch on me, so no accident)

- a central heating line in an old house that was shorted live 240V (and yes, there was a ground fault protector and no, it didn't trip, and hey if not for the apparently very well insulating paint someone probably would have died). Long story short: the circuit that was run from the panel to the heater didn't have ground so they stuck a grounded prong plug into an ungrounded socket and called it a day. Good thing I'm paranoid about such stuff and checked against a waterline before working on that system. After plugging the heater into a grounded extension cord the breaker immediately tripped.

- hoisting up roofjoists the knot got caught and the rope had gotten more and more tension. We were hoisting about 20 of these one by one and it had gotten more or less routine. That one was anything but. When the knot slipped over the point where it was held up the tension in the line had gotten so high that the whole thing came flying over the building.

- a windmill that I built got caught in a storm and refused to furl due to a minor assembly error. Fortunately I'm a better welder than windmill-assembler and everything held up to more than 8 times the design stresses but I'm probably a much happier person not knowing how close I came on that one.

- sitting on a roof of a building that was about to have it's whole front replaced I leaned forward over the top to check the angle of the drop only to realize that the whole thing was already loose. One single kick and there were only a few tons of rubble left to clean up. The number of times I drove by that house right in front of it...

- replacing lightbulbs in an old chimney the ladder gave out (one of those iron cage jobs). Fortunately some of the rungs were in better shape.

If I think for a bit longer I'll probably find more of these.

A couple decades ago I ended up in a seat belt class.[1]

Was taught by a trauma doctor. Trauma is the number one cause of death by a mile! Everything else is not even close! And the number one cause of trauma is people not understanding the basic physics in play around them in ordinary life, not to mention any sort of specialized activity.

They covered a car, forces, constraints, dynamics and did so with the math boiled down for people, rules of thumb, and simple scenarios animated and with videos (gore included!) aimed at everyone regardless of education level. I was impressed!

The trauma doctor loved doing the class, and questions. Anytime someone asked in a way that they did not have prepped up and ready to go, that doc added to their library of stuff and tweaked the two hour session to address the question. By the time I attended, nobody asked anything that guy did not know how to address solid.

After that experience, I have long felt we should be doing this education more broadly. Saves a lot of lives.

[1]Was that or a ticket on my record. Also, for the record, I believe in seat belts and was caught with one briefly unsecured by a small town cop. Poor timing is all that was. Truth is, the class was great and I would have gladly attended given an opportunity. I consider it fortuitous due to the high quality of education I received.

People somehow believe that a 50 kph impact sitting in a vehicle equipped with airbags is a walk in the park.

Reminds me of the series of tiktok videos with the song “Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of OSHA violations.”

I’m morbidly curious, could you share one?

This is the full link https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdXKPwfr/

The vast majority are dumb things with ladders on scaffolds, or riding a forklift or a bucket, but most are pretty bad.

Perhaps the saddest part is the folks in the comments that talk like OSHA is some group you have to dodge “to get real work done”. I guess they just want to get maimed or killed to show fealty to their employer.

These are some highlight:

A makeshift raft for a scissor lift, floating on a pool, fully extended to change a lightbulb. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/r6wc7l/workers_on_a_s...

A ladder at full extension, barely wedged into the gap between the tailgate and a truck bed. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdXKmJ9o/

Climbing a ladder with a heating unit on his back, instead of getting a scissor lift. https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdXKhK5o/

Using a cutting torch to open a full liquid storage container. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdXKyNEb/

Standing on the I-beam he’s cutting. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdXKLSHw/

Wow these are amazing (in the sense that I’m continuing to be surprised in how many unique ways people can put themselves in danger). I appreciate you getting back to me with a link

Yes. I used to work for a company involved in a large, nationwide infrastructure project.

They had company-wide reporting on OHS incidents, and it was a daily litany of absurd and tragic accidents. Fatalities weren't common, but injuries and close calls were very common.

Most common: falls and electrocution.

Sorting by ascending date, 12/31/1969 appears to have been an exceedingly dangerous day to be working on literally anything at all.

(/s)

People in general are terrible at estimating the risk of infrequent but high-impact events. One in a million risk of death feels the same as one in a billion to a lot of people, but is literally 1,000x worse. COVID especially has revealed that some people are blasé about even 1 in 1,000 chance.

I had several arguments recently with multiple family members about food safety. They do very risky things like leaving warm (but not hot!) cooked food out on the counter all day next to the sink where they wash raw chicken meat. The bacteria from the chicken can easily splash onto the perfect growth medium.

But you see, they "never" got sick in the past, so I'm worrying about nothing. Meanwhile I've hugged the toilet throwing up all night twice from getting food poisoning from the cooking of a family member.

Food poisoning can and does kill people, but it's not seen as something to worry about. E.g.: "CDC estimates 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States."

Okay, it's not as bad as COVID, but still...

That is odd to me. Food safety seems very important and who wants to be poisoned with a sore ass from the runs or vomiting? Weird. The bad thing is I have not been taught food safety but learned most of it by osmosis from various sources, but it should be taught.

I get arguments if I raise any food-safety-related topic. If I even politely suggest something, I get screeching as a response.

My father taught me something a long time ago:

There are three kinds of people in the world. 1) those that do not learn from their mistakes. 2) those that learn from their mistakes. 3) those that learn from the mistakes of others.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are in categories 1 and 2. Very few people are capable of avoiding risks they haven't personally encountered at least once.

It is not a matter of the food safety - I reckon people take a lot of pride in how they prepare food as it speaks to their family / upbringing / wider culture. Let alone the more basic people don’t want to be lectured to change their habits. I recently didn’t mention some off tasting food at a party to not upset anyone but I regret that now. But yeah … it is quite personal to people I think. Especially if they are cooking the way mama did it.

Why do they wash chicken?

One personal incident comes to my mind. I once had an internship at a workshop doing metal stuff. I had to drill a hole in some component. They had these man sized drilling machines. I, being inexcusable stupid, tried to remove the chips (while the machine was running) with the end of my sleeve. I wore an old and oversized hoodie. The drill bit caught the end of my sleeve and started rolling it up. I was about to get shredded through the machine but some friend hit the emergency button. To that point the machine has rolled up my sleeve up to the shoulder. Only because the hoodie was oversized, my arm was able to slip out of the sleeve, so I wasn't injured at all. I can't think about that without shivers.

This YouTube channel from British Columbia does reenactments of work accidents for educational purposes. Here's one about an ammonia leak at an ice rink, which is a good example of the work they do educating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBxzXKRSjsc

Wow! That channel is exemplary!

I plan on showing it on the job. They have so many basics well presented. Thank you Canada!

What does your comment have to do with the article?

Idiot with dangerous machinery doing dangerous things and thinking they have it under control is the topic of discussion.

You still have to make the leap that this guy who crashed his plane has the same level of awareness of the danger of heavy machinery as "most people" as the original commenter claims. With this being such an outlying incident that is honestly hard to do. Or in other words, I have trouble believing that many people could be as ignorant as the guy in the video. It's one thing to say that most people don't know how dangerous an escalator is but another to say most people don't know how dangerous deliberately crashing a plane is.

I think you on the other hand overestimate how dangerous things can be. You have exposed your set to a biased set of stories with a predetermined ending.

Like consider the following scene. A drunk man. He is lighting the fuses of small explosives and rockets shoot into the air. Then he stumbles into his house and finds his gun. He goes back out laughing and screaming. People look at him scared, what is he gonna do with that gun? He starts firing. Straight into the air. Happy new year!

People do this. They do this and live. Most of the time.

Speeding doesn't kill you most of the time also.

Those falling bullets do kill people though. Rarely is it the one who fired it or anyone nearby but a few people do die every New Year. Far more than can be justified with "It's just a prank, bro."

Only in America could you see a drunk man waving a gun around, firing wildly into the air, and think "this is fine" :p

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