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by psadauskas 40 days ago
I'm not sure what you're asking for here.

Used to be, the contractor would rent a trenchbox at his discretion. But that means "almost never", because the contractor that doesn't has lower prices than one that does, and just has to pay the occasional OSHA fine. But workers keep dying in trenches, so the government has to step in and make a rule "thou must always use a trenchbox".

We can't go back to "contractor's discretion", because then people die in easily preventable ways. The other alternative is MORE regulation, and the contractor has to do a soil study to know if they're required to use a trenchbox for this particular trench.