Comment by fweespeech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fweespeech | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think this is unreasonable simply because industrial accidents do happen and they aren't 100% preventable, much like car accidents. There should be [large] amounts of financial compensation [like $2.5 million, or about 10x what she'd have made at $400/month for 50 years] but "most of the gross profits" and "jail time" is ridiculous.

https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/commonstats.html

> 3.3 per 100,000 in the US die

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/osh_12042014.htm

> Over half of the more than 3.0 million private industry injury and illness cases reported in 2013 were of a more serious nature that involved days away from work, job transfer, or restriction (DART cases). These cases occurred at a rate of 1.7 cases per 100 full-time workers, a statistically significant decrease from 2012.

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

> Fatalities per 100,000 Licensed Drivers

> 15.84 in 2012, 23.21 in 1994

There are, frankly, far more dangerous for-profit machines that people happily refrain from suggesting those sorts of penalties for.

Why not jail time? If someone designs an unsafe process, doesn't put guards on the machines to save a buck, or eliminates safety procedures to increase output, that is morally as reprehensible as if that person held the knife. I think it should be treated as an assault.

Edit: I see this situation as more analogous to drunk driving than a simple car accident. We certainly do jail people when they unintentionally injure someone because they were drunk. It would be reasonable jail someone who prioritizes profit over human life and causes an injury as a result.

Isn't the whole ISO business and industry standard practices put in place to prevent that and protect everyone: workers from getting injured on the job, bosses from having to pay enormous amount of money as compensation (the insurance will kick in if the company got his ISO and stuff right) and the insurance raking in money for forcing the workplace to be safer ? (I know reality isn't that rosy but that's the objective, right ?)

>that is morally as reprehensible as if that person held the knife. I think it should be treated as an assault.

Are you guilty for buying a cheaper produce when child labor was used to produce it? Does your knowledge of the abuse going into making it cheaper matter?

Absolutely.

You are knowingly and directly allowing a child slave driver to profit from your purchase.

Where exactly do you absolve yourself of guilt in that transaction?

I don't think it's unreasonable. If the costs of these accidents are high, then they'll invest in making their processes safer. There is absolutely no excuse for having a machine like that in use.

if the reward for losing body parts is high, people will find a way to make it happen to collect the reward! No matter how much you reward them, it can never be so much as to ever be an incentive to somebody.

Ah! But then the factory builder will be forced to build safer factories to prevent workers from injuring themselves and ruining the owners.

/s

1) 10x the lifetime salary of a worker is high.

2) Nothing is 100% reliable or safe. We are lucky to have a 1.7% rate of serious injury/fatality in the US on a full time worker per year situation. You aren't going to be able to reduce that significantly. Operating heavy machines is dangerous.

"10x the lifetime salary of a worker is high."

So? Losing a limb is huge.

"Nothing is 100% reliable or safe. We are lucky to have a 1.7% rate of serious injury/fatality in the US on a full time worker per year situation. You aren't going to be able to reduce that significantly. Operating heavy machines is dangerous."

And this is an incentive for employers to keep up maintenance and make sure that their workers are properly trained. And to not do what happened in this story, which is to try to get people to cut corners so they can make a couple more units.

Would you apply this to software engineering, and if not why not?

Should the engineer that was responsible for some XSS flaw 3 years ago used today to extract personal information (which in turn can be used for identity theft) be personally required to pay damages? Should a peer that reviewed and approved their code, and maybe the sysadmin that deployed it and manage who run the projects and didn't use all possible security controls?

There is a difference, and it's that losing a limb can mean an end to one's ability to support themselves. Especially with cases like this one.

As an analogy - what's the difference?

What if the error was in the machine's control system logic?

Should, or should not, the production tool (and software) be held accountable for what may have been ill advised use of the machine? (Reaching inside to seat the metal sheet sounds like a dodgy move. Bad design? Broken machine? Stupid operator?)

When tragedy strikes, we, as moral animals, want to assign blame. Seek justice. Maybe even retribution.

Unfortunately, our justice-seeking missiles are rarely a precision instrument, and the ultimate cause of the accident may have been well away from the floor of the accident itself. It might have been the software engineer. Who knows. But the question (as a hypothetical) remains -- if it WAS the software engineer for the control system of the widget-stamping thingie used at LG's factory in Mexico, should that engineer be held accountable?

We are lucky to have a 1.7% rate of serious injury/fatality in the US on a full time worker per year situation.

Where did that figure come from? That would indicate that if you work full-time for forty years, you've got a roughly fifty-fifty chance of serious injury or fatality (or about a thirty percent chance over twenty years).

That seems far, far too high. Is this a particular kind of worker? I'm sure I'd notice if about half of all employees didn't make it to retirement without being killed or seriously injured.

Did you not read my first comment?

Perhaps I was using a different definition than you were expecting but 'serious injury' to me means serious enough that it impacts your ability to perform your job, at least temporarily.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/osh_12042014.htm

Injuries and illnesses by type of case Over half of the more than 3.0 million private industry injury and illness cases reported in 2013 were of a more serious nature that involved days away from work, job transfer, or restriction (DART cases). These cases occurred at a rate of 1.7 cases per 100 full-time workers, a statistically significant decrease from 2012. (See table 7.) The rates for the two components of DART cases--cases involving days away from work and cases requiring job transfer or restriction--was unchanged at 1.0 and 0.7 case per 100 workers, respectively, in 2013. Other recordable cases--those not involving days away from work, job transfer, or restriction--accounted for the remaining 1.4 million injury and illness cases in 2013 and was unchanged at a rate of 1.6 cases per 100 full-time workers.

The TRC injury and illness incidence rate remained highest in 2013 among mid-size private industry establishments (those employing between 50 and 249 workers) and lowest among small establishments (those employing fewer than 11 workers). (See table 3 and chart 2.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com