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As an automotive engine mechanic, ive always been fascinated by large building equipment like elevators and escalators. That having been said, most of the time

As an automotive engine mechanic, ive always been fascinated by large building equipment like elevators and escalators. That having been said, most of the time when large ubiquitous equipment requires periodic maintenance at scheduled intervals, you have more safety involved. large multistory escalators and elevators have numerous moving parts and circuits to lock out/tag out to ensure equipment service is performed safely. The result of a rush-job is always a gruesome headline on the local news. Theres also extensive testing. Overload/overtorque systems have to be tested, fail-safe certification has to take place, and the device has to run for a given time before its entered back into service. In my job, I wouldnt think to return a heavy truck to a customer before driving it on both city and highway streets to confirm everything I've worked on performs as expected.

ballooney 8y ago
I can vouch for the testing and safety overhead when compared to what the layman might imagine. A friend of mine designs the ticket barriers for the London Underground, among other customers, and the work that goes into ensuring the safety of those autonatic saloon-door style gates is enormous - you can just imagine what a poorly designed or faulty one might do to, I dont know, a pregnant person. It’s definitely a case of the 80:20 rule applying to the design vs the finessing and safety.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>The result of a rush-job is always a gruesome headline on the local news. The opposite. 99x/100 rushing things turns out fine. It's just a small fraction of the time you get a near miss or an actual injury. We just happen to live in a society where those risks aren't tolerated. Elsewhere in the world those risks are tolerated. That's part of why so much manufacturing has moved overseas. When you don't have to spend an hour locking out a conveyor system to spend 10min replacing a part you can pass those savings down to your customers and undercut the competition.
- imglorp 8y ago
  I think that's the cognitive bias called the Optimism Bias. https://psychonline.eku.edu/insidelook/%E2%80%9Cit-won%E2%80%99t-happen-me%E2%80%9D-optimism-bias https://psychonline.eku.edu/insidelook/%E2%80%9Cit-won%E2%80...
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    My point still stands. Most corner cutting (is it even corner cutting if the safety requirement isn't there in the first place?) will turn out fine unless you cut the same corner every day of your life or cut a ton of corners at once. If that weren't the case every electrician that ever tagged out a breaker with a piece of tape and a note saying to check to make sure X isn't still being worked on would be dead.
    - imglorp 8y ago
      Yes, I was agreeing with you... just adding the name to this phenomena.
- nimbius 8y ago
  >It's just a small fraction of the time you get a near miss or an actual injury. We're taught to value the entire lifecycle of our work, at least in my field. For example, rushing to finish a steering maintenance on a large tanker truck could mean your friend gets his thumbs crushed under a pry bar, or it could mean hundreds of fatalities as the poor job you did caused the tanker to collide with a shopping center. A missing cotter pin or a failed motor ground could easily injure dozens, or even kill them, on a large enough escalator.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >, or it could mean hundreds of fatalities as the poor job you did caused the tanker to collide with a shopping center. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The vast majority of the time mechanical failure results in the vehicle coming to a stop on the shoulder without anything spectacular happening. Think about all the trailer blowouts where the only damage was to the underwear of whoever was nearby. We do things (like install cotter pins, on steering, not in tires, or not intentionally at least) to prevent those sorts of failures because there's a small chance of something spectacularly bad happening (and because downtime is $$ and if you're broken down on the side of the road the DOT vultures will turn up out of nowhere and find a reason to make your downtime even more $$).
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  Hence the term 'normalization of deviance' [0] (where small problems occur repeatedly and people become habituated to them because nothing really bad ever happens). When the really bad thing happens, then you get the gruesome headlines. Examples the are O-ring burn-through events that preceded the Challenger disaster [1] (7 astronauts, dead), and the 'smoulders' that preceded the Kings Cross underground railway fire [2] (31 people. Dead.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Vaughan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Vaughan [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire

ballooney 8y ago

I can vouch for the testing and safety overhead when compared to what the layman might imagine. A friend of mine designs the ticket barriers for the London Underground, among other customers, and the work that goes into ensuring the safety of those autonatic saloon-door style gates is enormous - you can just imagine what a poorly designed or faulty one might do to, I dont know, a pregnant person. It’s definitely a case of the 80:20 rule applying to the design vs the finessing and safety.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

>The result of a rush-job is always a gruesome headline on the local news. The opposite. 99x/100 rushing things turns out fine. It's just a small fraction of the time you get a near miss or an actual injury. We just happen to live in a society where those risks aren't tolerated. Elsewhere in the world those risks are tolerated. That's part of why so much manufacturing has moved overseas. When you don't have to spend an hour locking out a conveyor system to spend 10min replacing a part you can pass those savings down to your customers and undercut the competition.

imglorp 8y ago
I think that's the cognitive bias called the Optimism Bias. https://psychonline.eku.edu/insidelook/%E2%80%9Cit-won%E2%80%99t-happen-me%E2%80%9D-optimism-bias https://psychonline.eku.edu/insidelook/%E2%80%9Cit-won%E2%80...
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  My point still stands. Most corner cutting (is it even corner cutting if the safety requirement isn't there in the first place?) will turn out fine unless you cut the same corner every day of your life or cut a ton of corners at once. If that weren't the case every electrician that ever tagged out a breaker with a piece of tape and a note saying to check to make sure X isn't still being worked on would be dead.
  - imglorp 8y ago
    Yes, I was agreeing with you... just adding the name to this phenomena.
nimbius 8y ago
>It's just a small fraction of the time you get a near miss or an actual injury. We're taught to value the entire lifecycle of our work, at least in my field. For example, rushing to finish a steering maintenance on a large tanker truck could mean your friend gets his thumbs crushed under a pry bar, or it could mean hundreds of fatalities as the poor job you did caused the tanker to collide with a shopping center. A missing cotter pin or a failed motor ground could easily injure dozens, or even kill them, on a large enough escalator.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >, or it could mean hundreds of fatalities as the poor job you did caused the tanker to collide with a shopping center. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The vast majority of the time mechanical failure results in the vehicle coming to a stop on the shoulder without anything spectacular happening. Think about all the trailer blowouts where the only damage was to the underwear of whoever was nearby. We do things (like install cotter pins, on steering, not in tires, or not intentionally at least) to prevent those sorts of failures because there's a small chance of something spectacularly bad happening (and because downtime is $$ and if you're broken down on the side of the road the DOT vultures will turn up out of nowhere and find a reason to make your downtime even more $$).
KineticLensman 8y ago
Hence the term 'normalization of deviance' [0] (where small problems occur repeatedly and people become habituated to them because nothing really bad ever happens). When the really bad thing happens, then you get the gruesome headlines. Examples the are O-ring burn-through events that preceded the Challenger disaster [1] (7 astronauts, dead), and the 'smoulders' that preceded the Kings Cross underground railway fire [2] (31 people. Dead.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Vaughan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Vaughan [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire