[dotgov]

Not the OP, but I have a few from my workplace: My favorite example was being reminded to wear sunscreen because it is summer. by our "safety coordinator" at an all hands meeting. Or the "ladder training", where I was taught to use a ladder. The cause for that is is a "zero accident policy". Which is perceived as a good thing, and how could it not? Accidents are bad. Never mind the absurdity of a zero accident policy. Criticizing a policy like that very quickly puts a "reckless and dangerous" stamp on you, as the only reason accidents do not happen is the policy. The policy leads to reams of paperwork being filled out which creates a need for more administrative personnel and as those people get paid to do that, it is in their best interest that it stays that way. So if you think about lifting that 50 lbs box as a healthy adult in prime physical condition, you better ask your safety coordinator first, because if anyone sees you, you will get a slap on the wrist. My theory is that at the heart of what I am describing is fear. As long as the company can demonstrate that the employee was instructed to play it safe, they have the upper hand, should it come to a lawsuit. And I have a hunch that it also has to do with philosophy. Some people believe that the world can be a safe place for everyone. And they will control and subdue to make that a reality. And they are right. Lack of action is safe. What they fail to see is that it leads to stagnation and death.

[Spooky23]

That’s about insurance, while someone might care about your safety, they spend to save and reduce liability.

It varies by state as well. In New York, for example, any third-party work related fall from a height can be the company’s responsibility. You you need to have a bunch of procedures around ladders and lifts to get insurance or avoid excessive rates.

A zero accident policy means that you don’t accept employee injuries as part of the job. There’s usually a safety committee and they look at root causes for accidents, and processes to control them. From a company POV, I have no idea what your physical condition is, but when you something stupid like deadlift and transfer that 50lb piece of equipment on a ladder, I have to pay for it.

I worked at a place years ago where the procedure to decommission a hard drive was to puncture the platters with a drill press and remove the electronics with a pry bar. All good until an IT guy got metal debris in his eye, and required extensive surgery. Turns out the IT folks removed safety equipment to make the process faster, didn’t wear eye protection, and had the press improperly situated. Correcting any of those things would have prevented that accident - and they were fubar because no process existed to question it, and everyone felt comfortable doing what they were doing. It may seem like infantilism, but there’s a guy who suffered and continues to suffer from an eye injury because nobody was accountable for his safety.

[jfim]

The reminders to be safe are to ensure that people don't grow complacent about things that are dangerous.

Our school has a mandatory safety training before students go on internships, and the reason for that is that interns have died in the past. A lot of things can be dangerous at work (including ladders) and not everybody is familiar with the associated hazards. Ladders, compressed air, electricity, machinery, confined spaces, chemicals, dust, and so on are all things that are dangerous, and the fact that they injure or kill people every year even though they're known hazards is a testament that people are too complacent around them.

[Aeolun]

> The reminders to be safe are to ensure that people don't grow complacent about things that are dangerous.

Which doesn’t work, since now everyone gets complacent about the training instead.

[barrysteve]

I'd argue it looks like fear, but really it's fusion. People want to fuse all their needs together into one hive-mind reminder system so they have more time and energy to spend on work. Smartphones and management are all too happy to help.

People can't see the self-evident anymore. The Kantian and Nietzschian thing-in-itself is dead. People have to be told not to walk into boxes otherwise they will, while they dream of some heavenly work project in their mind.

How do we control it? Zero accident policies, you gotta remember not to walk into boxes and you gotta remember to slap on sunscreen, as if the material world only starts to exist again in people's minds when you mention it.

[dotgov]

First we killed god, now we try to kill the thing-in-itself. Probably a lot harder to do the latter. I appreciate your perspective on this, I hadn't made that connection before. When you put it like this, I wonder if this fusion is a force that acts counter to individuation, basically being part of "something bigger", the workplace replacing community?

[jiggawatts]

I once worked in the head office of a mining company in an IT role. There was a guy wearing a hard-hat standing next to the stairs with a clipboard taking notes to see if people were holding on to the handrail or not (as per corporate safety regulations).

You see, there must be "one rule for everyone". The head-office suits can't be seen as discriminating against the plebs at the mine sites. It's a perception thing, people won't obey if it's "rules for thee, not for me".

So... I got a talking to by HR for a solid hour because I didn't hold the handrail when taking two steps down to the cafeteria.

[WalterBright]

The US judiciary is far too friendly to personal injury lawsuits.

The prevailing atmosphere is it's never the injured person who is at fault, it's always somebody nearby who has money.

[Kranar]

How do you know this to be true? From a cursory search it looks like 95% of lawsuits for personal injury never make it to trial, so the judiciary is never involved in the vast majority of cases.

Of the 5% that do make it to trial, only 56% of them result in any award for the plaintiff and if you look at the breakdown [1], that's because of auto accidents which can hardly be said to be a case of "blame is laid on the person who has money", especially when you look at how much money is awarded in such claims.

Premises injuries has only a 39% success rate.

Product liability has a 38% success rate.

Medical malpractice has only a 19% success rate.

What do you know about the judiciary that leads you to your claim?

[1] https://www.cloudlex.com/tips-and-tricks/personal-injury-cas...

[WalterBright]

How about the playground equipment at schools has all been wussified due to lawsuits?

Or kids' chemistry sets that went in the 1960s from an advanced chemistry course to little more than kitchen recipes?

All the result of lawsuits.

Then there was a painter who fell off his own ladder while painting Steve Ballmer's mansion, who successfully sued Ballmer for zillions. And people in general who carry millions of dollars in liability insurance.

As for "not making it to trial", people often settle out of fear of what would happen in court, not because the lawsuits wouldn't get traction in court.

[ridgeguy]

I have fond memories of my Gilbert chemistry set, circa 1964. It allowed me to learn chemistry and get in slightly serious trouble if I didn't pay attention. Totally excellent.

Not long ago, I checked out buying a chem set for my grand-niece. Completely uninspiring. Color changes. Baking soda/vinegar fizzes. I bought her good archery equipment. I'll take care of the chemistry inspiration with my own curriculum.

[WalterBright]

My Gilbert chemistry set was the last one before they were emasculated. Had a lot of fun with it, but didn't learn much chemistry :-)

I was smart enough not to eat the copper sulfate.

[Kranar]

I think you're just making things up based on an unfounded and certainly unsubstantiated perception of reality.

Do you have any reference for your claim about Steve Ballmer? I tried numerous different ways of searching for it and none of them produce any kind of result. I also tried Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and some other rich tech CEOs but nothing comes up. Once again, you may have heard some kind of anecdotes or stories and mixed things up in your mind to create an image of what you think is real, but the actual statistics and facts do not back up your bold assertions.

For example, it's not lawsuits that put an end to the chemistry sets of the 1960s, it's the Toxic Substances Control Act together with the The Toy Safety Act that removed the use of lead, poisons, acids and other toxic chemicals from chemistry sets that were marketing towards kids. Had nothing to do with lawsuits but rather due to legislation.

If you want actually want to blame something for the decline of the modern chemistry set, it has more to do with policymakers concerns about their use in illegal drug manufacturing than it does with any kind of lawsuit.

[WalterBright]

> Do you have any reference for your claim about Steve Ballmer?

It was some years ago in the Seattle Times. Sorry I didn't keep a clipping.

I was also injured once in a car accident, being hit by a garbage truck. The ambulance people told me I hit the jackpot. People came out of the woodwork recommending personal injury lawyers who could set me up for life. People at work all told me I had the million dollar injury. People were coaching (unasked) me on how to pretend I was much more injured than I was.

All I asked for was to pay the medical bills and lost time at work and my car. The opposition lawyer was aghast, and was certainly eager to sign that deal.

But I'm just imagining things, right?

I could be wrong about the chemistry set emasculation. But just a couple weeks ago on HN there was a long thread about the wussification of school playgrounds.

[Kranar]

>It was some years ago in the Seattle Times. Sorry I didn't keep a clipping.

The Seattle Times has a searchable archive of all their articles going back 30 years.

Searches for "Ballmer lawsuit", "Ballmer painter", "Ballmer ladder" all turn up nothing. It looks like you made this story up; not in an intentionally deceptive manner mind you, but the same way old wives make up stories by mixing together pieces of different stories taken out of context together to fit a narrative.

Your anecdote about getting into an accident is tragic, but has nothing to do to support your claim that, and I quote:

"it's never the injured person who is at fault, it's always somebody nearby who has money."

Finally your point about wussification of school playgrounds is precisely what I wish to avoid. There was basically a conversation on HN where people parroted opinions about how playgrounds are wussified, and just like with this discussion it probably had no facts or evidence to substantiate the claim but you accepted the claims made in that discussion simply on the basis that it appeals to your belief system.

Do not believe everything you read on this site. You can be mindful that people on this site have opinions on certain topics, but do not take those opinions and then reassert them as if they are facts. This site is just as full of misinformation and biases as any other, where people pretend to be experts and assert categorical statements on subjects they have no expertise in because it appeals to their beliefs. Yes this place is more civil about spreading misinformation, but misinformation is no more factual just because the people spreading it do so politely.

[HWR_14]

> it's the Toxic Substances Control Act together with the The Toy Safety Act

I think it's good to note in cases like this that both were bipartisan (in passage if not in origination), lest one side or the other think this was an ideological issue.

[majormajor]

Let's assume that all the successful "awards for plaintiff" claims were 100% justified.

That's 56% of 5% of total lawsuits.

So that suggests that 97.2% of those lawsuits are unsuccessful.

From WalterBright's comments my guess is that his position would be something like "a ton of money and time is wasted lawyers and other legal stuff due to a system that accepts so many frivolous suits."

But another person could interpret that as "there are a lot of legitimate claims in that 97.2% that end up being unsuccessful because the US system is unfriendly to you if you don't have $$$ to pursue a case." Close to the complete opposite.

In terms of "how good the US judicial system for these sorts of liability cases," I'm not sure that actually matters much, though! In either case, there's a lot of waste and a lot of failures in the system. A system that relied less on adversarial procedures and each side retaining their own council and more on judges with independent fact-finders or arbitrators seems very preferable! If you're of the "it's rigged against the plaintiff" view, this system could be much harder to drown in paperwork and spurious procedural stuff like a large corporation can do to a small plaintiff today. And if you're in the "most of this shouldn't even get this far, it's too easy to file nuisance suits" camp, this system could toss out ridiculous things sooner.

This sort of "inquisitorial" or "nonadversarial" system is used in a few places in the US (like traffic court) and much more extensively in some countries.

[Kranar]

I interpreted WalterBright's comment as an ignorant way of saying that people today don't take responsibility for their own actions and instead try to find someone rich enough to pin the blame on, especially as a means of enriching themselves.

The statistics do not support that claim.

If you wish to make a more nuanced claim and discuss it, then by all means feel free to do so directly, without speculating about what WalterBright meant. It would be nice to do it on the basis of some kind of evidence though.

[majormajor]

" The US judiciary is far too friendly to personal injury lawsuits." from WalterBright is a quite different claim than simply "people don't take responsibility." It's about who the system pushes responsibility onto, plaintiffs or defendants.

My own position was in my second to last paragraph: the US system sucks regardless of if you think it favors plaintiffs or defendants.

[Kranar]

The original post is literally two sentences and you omit the sentence that is pertinent to my point. I think that alone says all it needs to about the manner by which you are evaluating this topic.

All the best to you.

[HWR_14]

> So that suggests that 97.2% of those lawsuits are unsuccessful.

If you assume the 95% of lawsuits that settle were 0% justified. On the other hand, I'll just assume that the guilt was so apparent there was no point of putting up a defense and wasting the money. So that means that a shocking 97.8% of personal injury claims are valid.

The rest of your post relies on your assumption being valid, which I vehemently disagree with. I don't really think it's 100%, but I do think it's closer to 100% than 0%.

[majormajor]

The rest of my post is actually saying the system sucks regardless of who's getting the short stick today.

I didn't interpret "don't make it to trial" as "100% settle" - my initial assumption was that they got thrown out instead. Probably it's a mix, that's a fair point.

Cases being settled, to me, though, still suggest that we would do better in a system where "bothering to fight it" isn't a question of deep pockets, and buying people off isn't an option, and things actually end up in front of judges. For transparency alone, vs confidential settlements.

[HWR_14]

> I didn't interpret "don't make it to trial" as "100% settle" - my initial assumption was that they got thrown out instead.

According to the source the OP cited, the vast majority settle (according to the source's source, it seems like 10-20% are thrown out.)

They list the primary reason that cases settle isn't a question of deep pockets. It's that the plaintiff's attorney makes a case for the jury amount to be $X-$Y dollars and Y-X is a small enough spread that everyone would rather just settle the case than go through a jury trial when they are 90%+ (I made up that percentage) in agreement. That is, when they agree the defendant owes $XXX +/- 5%. Why waste the time on the last few thousand when they can split the difference and go home?

Meanwhile, if you're considered about regulatory capture, a jury and not a bench trial seem better. For what it's worth, the US system totally lets the judge decide the entire matter if both sides agree to waive the jury. It seems like that's the case in ~25-33% of cases that make their way to trial.

[jjav]

> From a cursory search it looks like 95% of lawsuits for personal injury never make it to trial, so the judiciary is never involved in the vast majority of cases.

These decisions don't happen in a vacuum, they happen in an environment where the companies (their lawyers) know that settling nearly every unreasonable lawuit is still cheaper than risking going to a trial.

[vba616]

Do you have a good, unbiased sample of instances of people injured by businesses?

Any random major corporation is dealing with hundreds if not thousands of lawsuits at any given moment. They can, and do, wreck the lives of thousands of people without it even being significant enough to report in SEC filings, let alone spark a journalist's interest.

And then there are all the injuries and deaths that lead to consulting a lawyer who says the life lost isn't worth enough to make a lawsuit practical. If you don't assess the number of these, it's pretty hard to say how friendly things are for personal injury lawsuits.

[WalterBright]

I'm not referring to corporations wrecking the lives of people. I'm referring to people accidentally injuring themselves and going for the jackpot lawsuit against any entity nearby with lots of money to extract.

[vba616]

My point was that what you are referring to does not represent personal injury in the US. You can be angry at specific instances like you describe, but it's totally unrepresentative.

In my opinion, which is not based on expertise as such, but having worked in the corporate litigation industry, and having had friends of friends and family injured and killed by corporations and businesses.

[WalterBright]

> having had friends of friends and family injured and killed by corporations and businesses

One wonders what profession these people are in. Also, being in the litigation industry, I'm sure you know that injuring and killing someone is a crime. I'm talking about accidents here.

[vba616]

>One wonders what profession these people are in.

Both people I'm thinking of were victims of interactions as consumers (of medical services/products), not employees, as it happens.

In one case, the lack of a lucrative career factored directly into the futility of litigation.

In the other, the harm was largely that a medication side effect led to impulsive decisions that undermined a good career and other relationships, and would've been difficult to prove in court.

How do I know this latter was real? Because I coincidentally know there was a massive lawsuit on behalf of victims less ambiguous.

>Also, being in the litigation industry, I'm sure you know that injuring and killing someone is a crime

I am not a lawyer, and I'm not "in the litigation industry" for some years now. However, it's a strange thing to say that injuring or killing someone is always a crime. It's frequently not even a tort. Have you known nobody that's died due to a doctor's mistake? A prescription medication? Seen a "death panel" at a nursing home?

>I'm talking about accidents here.

Sure, and so was I. I mean, you can never really be certain, especially in the many cases that don't get litigated. That's why discovery is a thing, I think. Many, many cases just don't meet cost/benefit criteria and are never filed.

I like repeating this no matter how much I get downvoted each time: medical errors are one of the leading causes of death, behind only one or two like cancer. They are vastly underestimated by most people because there is no diagnostic nor billing code for fuck-ups. Anyone who's worked anywhere near the medical/insurance industry knows how everything revolves around codes, so it had a bitter ring of truth to me when I first read a certain article from Johns Hopkins.

[Apocryphon]

Seems like that’s been baked into the culture of American arbitration since its founding. Instead of top-down collective regulation, which was a relatively new advance made in the last century, the system from the start has always promoted individuals hashing out their differences in courts with torts. I am reminded that Lincoln had the rustic profession of lawyer when Illinois was still a semi-frontier state.

Isn’t that the aim of a libertarian society? In the absence of regulation, of overbearing government oversight or bureaucracy, individuals hash it out in courts? Would think that’s something that the American system since the Anglo common law days and the libertarian ideal agree upon.

[WalterBright]

Regulations that prevent force or fraud or infringing on other peoples' rights are perfectly valid in libertarianism. It's a proper function of government.

[Apocryphon]

So should such regulation should be enforced by government bureaucrats, rather than by individuals pursuing the proper enforcement of contracts via courts of arbitration?

[WalterBright]

I thought I was pretty clear.

[Teever]

What's wrong with telling people to wear sunscreen?

What's wrong with ensuring that people know how to use a ladder safely?

What's wrong with aspiring to have zero accidents in a work place?

[willcipriano]

> What's wrong with telling people to wear sunscreen?

The same thing that's wrong with telling people to wipe their asses when they use the toilet. I'd be offended that you don't think I've got that handled for myself.

[crooked-v]

Every office I've ever worked in has had sooner or later has someone who's needed to be told by management something about clothes/behavior/hygiene that you'd think should be obvious, and it was something different each time.

[willcipriano]

If it's in response to a issue, that's constructive and helpful, but imagine some 20 something restroom safety coordinator reminding you that you'll get a rash if you don't wipe yourself as you leave the restroom unprompted.

These "helpful tips" are mostly a power play. The framing is you are an idiot that has to be told that you get sunburned in the sun, let me guide you so you don't hurt yourself, aren't you so glad that I'm here to look out for you.

[astrange]

I forgot to wear sunscreen the other day at a work event and I’m still bright red two weeks later.

[landemva]

MSHA agrees with you about safety. And MSHA reacted sanely to the corona-panic by basically doing nothing more than reminding operators to allow miners to stay home when sick. https://www.msha.gov/news-media/press-releases/2021/03/10/us...

Yet OSHA got the publicity by attempting to mandate shots.

[impendia]

Wearing sunscreen is excellent advice, I do it consistently myself. In my opinion, it's highly appropriate to offer advice like this to friends and family.

But it would grate on me to be told this, or to be given advice on any other non-work matter, by my employer. It suggests a sort of paternalism that is out of line, and I would immediately assume ulterior motives (e.g. saving on health insurance bills) rather than genuine concern.

[landemva]

Seems you have a keyboard career.

I was glad to have been trained on proper blocking and hoisting, because things in the physical world at work can drop and hurt someone. During yearly MSHA refresher the trainer encouraged us to take eye protection from the company and use it at home.

>> ... sunscreen ... it's highly appropriate to offer advice like this ...

But you think it is appropriate to remind people about sunscreen use while workplace safety reminders are not good for you.

[Teever]

Would you prefer an employer who didn't give a shit about your well-being and treated you like a lump of labour to be wrung of all economic value and tossed aside when there's no more to get from you?

Like is it really so grating that someone tells you to do something good for yourself, even if their reason is because it's good for them?

Really?

[dotgov]

The same employer treated my like a lump of labor, wrung me out and I could not leave because I was shackled by being on a work visa. And they knew it. Those were the most miserable years of my life. I'd do it again, still, cause of the perspective it gave me, but there are probably other ways that involve less trauma.

Which makes them telling me to use sunscreen even more grating. The reason I find it so off-putting to tell employees to wear sunscreen in an all hands meeting is that I do not see this as the role of my employer. What I do in my private life is my responsibility and my choice. This might be a cultural difference too, I remember being alienated by the possibility of drug tests. The copious amounts of cocaine I might or might not do in my spare time are none of my employers business.

And about cloaking things in "good": I have yet to see a bureaucracy that does care about "good". In my experience bureaucracy cares about risk mitigation and liability. My personal risk assessment works differently than that, it takes things like my human experience into consideration. So I get cranky when I feel my employer is encroaching on my personal space.

[impendia]

If someone, i.e. an individual person whom I know in real life, gave me advice then I would happily listen. This includes bosses or coworkers.

But when it is coming through a bureaucracy, by mass email from someone whom I don't know (if it is signed by a named individual at all), I would be less happy.

Maybe this reflects excessive cynicism on my part towards large organizations. I recognize that not everyone feels the same way.

[HWR_14]

> But when it is coming through a bureaucracy, by mass email from someone whom I don't know (if it is signed by a named individual at all

What if it comes from XXX in HR, who just lost a family member to skin cancer and decided to use their corporate authority and "send to all" powers to remind everyone to use sunscreen.

What if it comes from a new study that shows that monitors cause skin cancer and it's new information most desk workers don't know to use sunscreen at their desk?

What if it comes every year in the "get ready for Summer" info packet?

What if it came with a reminder to be careful on Friday half-days that you weren't expecting?

I'm not sure what the cynicism is geared towards? It's impersonal? Isn't it a benefit that these aren't people who think you personally don't know to use sunscreen?

You said you questioned their motives. Would it help if you knew the people in HR and knew they were legitimately trying to help you? Would it help if they said "hey, don't get sick and raise our premiums. It comes out of the same pot off money everyone's bonuses come out of"?

[saulpw]

> What's wrong with aspiring to have zero accidents in a work place?

The same thing that's wrong with aspiring to have "zero bugs" in a codebase. You can have zero open issues (redefining "bug"), or zero known bugs at release (JPL-level quality metrics, at a huge cost), but any reasonable software developer knows that bugs must be accepted as part of the process of coding. Similarly, humans must accept that "accidents" are part of living. Things are not and never will be perfect, no matter how many rules or systems or metrics you put in place.

[landemva]

Human injury is radically different than a bug in FB/TWTR mobile app.

Safety is expensive. In USA mine safety is regulated by MSHA. Is anyone surprised that much mine production (except heavy stuff like gravel sand coal) is done overseas and imported? The lithium in your EV is not from USA.

[Godel_unicode]

The US is third in global mining activity, behind China and Austria.

[landemva]

I think we mostly agree, though likely Australia. It takes a lot of gravel and sand to build stuff. Due to the weight and bulk, this mining is kept close to home.