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Manufacturing is dangerous everywhere. In Europe it is safest the US is also quite safe. China is much worse, and India is a catastrophe. By doing metal work in

Manufacturing is dangerous everywhere. In Europe it is safest the US is also quite safe. China is much worse, and India is a catastrophe. By doing metal work in the US and not in China or India, you are saving lives. Fewer Americans will die then Chinese or Indians would have. The woman who died, according to the article, "and entered the screened-off area around the robot to clear the fault herself." She actually went into an area that was marked as unsafe. Of course, there is a simple fix for this, which is implemented in many good factories, you can have a gate which you have to open to get into that area, and by opening the gate you flip a dead switch which must be manually turned and pressed again in order to restart the robot. Either that, or there are mats which either turn the machine off or mats which you must be standing on for the machine to stay on. I am, however, wary of safty regulations that, for example, make it so that there has to be a shield with a saftey switch on stamping machines. Here is a video of how they work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_WITEHwjqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_WITEHwjqI you can imagine how an unsheilded one is dangerous, but to open the polycarbonate casing for each part and close it again before stamping is far slower. I think that instead, there should be tabular fines for companies. If an employee loses their finger in a press, then they get fined $200,000 no mater what tech was used. That leaves it up to the company to figure out a good way to prevent injuries.

Spooky23 10y ago
> I think that instead, there should be tabular fines for companies. If an employee loses their finger in a press, then they get fined $200,000 no mater what tech was used. That leaves it up to the company to figure out a good way to prevent injuries. In red states, that's known as oppressive regulation where useless bureaucrats are telling business owners how to do their job.
- timthelion 10y ago
  Using a fine is oppressive regulation or having standards is?
  - lovich 10y ago
    Both. If you are incredibly libertarian you view all business as contracts between consenting adults that the government should only be involved in if one side welshes on the deal
    - eutropia 10y ago
      Gov shouldn't even be involved then except insofar as it is necessary to establish the rule of law. Lawyers and courts can resolve those deal disagreements. If a buyer owes the seller money that's the seller's problem. (in this worldview)
contingencies 10y ago
China is buying far more industrial robots than anyone, so I would expect its safety to be rising rapidly.(Source: UN report[0] released October 2016)[1] The two large factories I visited in Dongguan last week were extremely well automated already. [0] http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/presspb2016d6_en.pd.. http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/presspb2016d6_en.pd.... (page 3, citing UNCTAD secretariat calculations, based on International Federation of Robotics, 2015, World Robotics 2015: Industrial Robots, available at http://www.ifr.org/industrial-robots/statistics/ http://www.ifr.org/industrial-robots/statistics/ (accessed 19 October 2016)) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12991293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12991293

Spooky23 10y ago

> I think that instead, there should be tabular fines for companies. If an employee loses their finger in a press, then they get fined $200,000 no mater what tech was used. That leaves it up to the company to figure out a good way to prevent injuries. In red states, that's known as oppressive regulation where useless bureaucrats are telling business owners how to do their job.

timthelion 10y ago
Using a fine is oppressive regulation or having standards is?
- lovich 10y ago
  Both. If you are incredibly libertarian you view all business as contracts between consenting adults that the government should only be involved in if one side welshes on the deal
  - eutropia 10y ago
    Gov shouldn't even be involved then except insofar as it is necessary to establish the rule of law. Lawyers and courts can resolve those deal disagreements. If a buyer owes the seller money that's the seller's problem. (in this worldview)

contingencies 10y ago

China is buying far more industrial robots than anyone, so I would expect its safety to be rising rapidly.(Source: UN report[0] released October 2016)[1] The two large factories I visited in Dongguan last week were extremely well automated already. [0] http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/presspb2016d6_en.pd.. http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/presspb2016d6_en.pd.... (page 3, citing UNCTAD secretariat calculations, based on International Federation of Robotics, 2015, World Robotics 2015: Industrial Robots, available at http://www.ifr.org/industrial-robots/statistics/ http://www.ifr.org/industrial-robots/statistics/ (accessed 19 October 2016)) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12991293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12991293