3 ms·

A lot of crushed, fell and electrocuted. All of them preventable I'm sure... unfortunate.

• jacquesm 5y ago
  The vast bulk of people that end up in the ER or the morgue are there for reasons that are more often than not just silly. The list of near misses is probably 10 times longer. On my list of near misses: - the trailer incident above (but not a scratch on me, so no accident) - a central heating line in an old house that was shorted live 240V (and yes, there was a ground fault protector and no, it didn't trip, and hey if not for the apparently very well insulating paint someone probably would have died). Long story short: the circuit that was run from the panel to the heater didn't have ground so they stuck a grounded prong plug into an ungrounded socket and called it a day. Good thing I'm paranoid about such stuff and checked against a waterline before working on that system. After plugging the heater into a grounded extension cord the breaker immediately tripped. - hoisting up roofjoists the knot got caught and the rope had gotten more and more tension. We were hoisting about 20 of these one by one and it had gotten more or less routine. That one was anything but. When the knot slipped over the point where it was held up the tension in the line had gotten so high that the whole thing came flying over the building. - a windmill that I built got caught in a storm and refused to furl due to a minor assembly error. Fortunately I'm a better welder than windmill-assembler and everything held up to more than 8 times the design stresses but I'm probably a much happier person not knowing how close I came on that one. - sitting on a roof of a building that was about to have it's whole front replaced I leaned forward over the top to check the angle of the drop only to realize that the whole thing was already loose. One single kick and there were only a few tons of rubble left to clean up. The number of times I drove by that house right in front of it... - replacing lightbulbs in an old chimney the ladder gave out (one of those iron cage jobs). Fortunately some of the rungs were in better shape. If I think for a bit longer I'll probably find more of these.
• ddingus 5y ago
  A couple decades ago I ended up in a seat belt class.[1] Was taught by a trauma doctor. Trauma is the number one cause of death by a mile! Everything else is not even close! And the number one cause of trauma is people not understanding the basic physics in play around them in ordinary life, not to mention any sort of specialized activity. They covered a car, forces, constraints, dynamics and did so with the math boiled down for people, rules of thumb, and simple scenarios animated and with videos (gore included!) aimed at everyone regardless of education level. I was impressed! The trauma doctor loved doing the class, and questions. Anytime someone asked in a way that they did not have prepped up and ready to go, that doc added to their library of stuff and tweaked the two hour session to address the question. By the time I attended, nobody asked anything that guy did not know how to address solid. After that experience, I have long felt we should be doing this education more broadly. Saves a lot of lives. [1]Was that or a ticket on my record. Also, for the record, I believe in seat belts and was caught with one briefly unsecured by a small town cop. Poor timing is all that was. Truth is, the class was great and I would have gladly attended given an opportunity. I consider it fortuitous due to the high quality of education I received.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    People somehow believe that a 50 kph impact sitting in a vehicle equipped with airbags is a walk in the park.