[dgemm]

I worked in mining as well and it's often terrifying watching the stuff that goes on all day at every urban construction site, even the things you can see from street level. Construction workers that stand directly below suspended crane loads in order to guide them down to the ground is something I see constantly and makes me nervous just to watch. If you tried anything like that at any of the mines I worked at you would be immediately escorted off site and probably blacklisted from working there again.

[taneq]

I've seen some things on mining construction sites that'd curl your toes, too. Once I was troubleshooting a cabinet and the light changed. I looked up and there was an EWP with two guys pulling cables, about 10m directly above me. No warning, no marked drop zone, no communication. On the same site I saw a 20 ton piece of equipment get lifted into position, double lift between a gantry crane and a Franna, again no drop zone or anything, just one guy coordinating with hand signals. It worked out OK, but yikes.

[trenning]

On the crane thing, I used to work in a warehouse with 150t overhead cranes and we'd never walk under loads, but we were also the operators, they were remote controlled, so the safety was engrained from the beginning.

I also worked on sites where you don't have a conventional work space such as construction sites and it seemed to be pretty casual with being under the load if you were working in the area or holding the guide rope. In my case we didn't really have an option most times to not be in the way because it was a confined space, that's fun to think about.

I think because depending on the job crane safety and awareness are not primary concerns for a lot of construction workers and those safety practices never get taught unfortunately.

In the same factory with good crane safety, I also almost got killed by an oversight in loto when I guy through a sheet of plastic and there was 240v line running behind it, not in conduit, and I was standing on the top of a ladder. Burned through the entire razor blade in my hand. Thank fuck the blade holder was plastic.

[habnds]

My experience has been that the divide in culture tends to coincide with union/non-union workplaces.

[abruzzi]

The unusual thing though is my first exposure to "lock-out/tag-out" was as a minimum wage employee at WalMart ~30 years ago. Among other things, they had a large cardboard bailer that compress all the empty cardboard boxes into a bale about 4ft x 3ft x 3ft. It would hold it there while you threaded baling wire through and tied it off. Then it would release and dump it onto your waiting pallet jack, so you could cart it off. We had to lo/to whenever it required service.

[duckymcduckface]

Tieing off if you're above 1.8m, not walking under suspended loads and de-energizing systems are so hard drilled into my brain. Haven't been on site in 4 years and I still get triggered by these.