Preventing Needless Deaths

Eliminate forced safety procedures and let the dumb ones weed themselves out.

Is it "zero tolerance" for working hot or working hot without PPE?

I completely agree with the new protocols that people should not ever unknowingly work hot. This part of the "zero tolerance" policy I fully agree with and support. What I dislike is that at least the filtered information that I got at work did not differentiate initially the idea of a worker working hot in troubleshooting mode versus manipulating mode. In troubleshooting mode the worker does not actually know what has gone wrong, they cannot guarantee what voltages will be encountered. In this mode the worker should not be in a flash protection (beekeeper) suit to inspect the wiring because the flash protection visor blocks so much visible light that even in direct sunlight vision is impaired. By differentiating between the two working hot modes of troubleshoot and manipulate, I find work to be done much safer now. Now the small down time to fix, while cold, what was found wrong, while hot, much safer since the brutal paperwork required for manipulating while hot makes the safe route faster.

I get what you mean. Try finding a bad bearing in a John Deere Combine without running the machine! OSHA says you have to keep all shields in place while the combine is running. While doing Winter Checkovers, we have to rely on Temperature entirely to check bearings because we can't see or get close enough to figure which ones are making noise. There are at least 400 bearings on just the threshing unit on combines.

Its a bit difficult to locate a fault without any juice on the system... Give me competant electricians and this attempt by one more agency to save us from ourselves will go away.

Competent electricians... you mean like this guy? I have been on a number of projects where a tradesman was killed or seriously injured after he REMOVED safety gear that was properly placed and installed. Darwin Award winners all, to be sure.

I am still pondering the title of the blog: As opposed to "Preventing Needed Deaths"?

Or this guy:

Service Drop, the hard way.

Everyone knows wearing a watch when working live is not a safe practice!

Oh good lord!

Well I guess when life is cheap, safety takes a back seat.

Preventing needless deaths? Yes, but this is small compared to the number of lives lost to "standard" health care practices. Consider this article which this quote comes from:

Although some adverse drug reactions (ADR) are not very serious, others cause the death, hospitalization, or serious injury of more than 2 million people in the United States each year, including more than 100,000 fatalities. In fact, adverse drug reactions are one of the leading causes of death in the United States.¹ Most of the time, these dangerous events could and should have been avoided. Even the less drastic reactions, such as change in mood, loss of appetite, and nausea, may seriously diminish the quality of life.

Alternative medicine doesn't boast the "clinical trials" that the pharmaceutical industry does, but investigate these "studies" beneath the surface and you find a lot of it is smoke and mirrors.

There are lots of trees we need to bark up.

I do find it unfortunate that an anonymous Guest should use an engineering forum to air his ill-educated views on a medical topic, on the back of a dodgy website peddling 12 year old data. I beg leave to refer your engineer selves to a far more reliable source of current mortality data, namely the National Center for Health Statistics at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm where adverse drug reactions do not even feature in the top ten.

I dont know if the readers have ever heard of

ALARA - As Low As Resonabily Acceptable

There is really no reason to work live. As an electrician I have worked live for years and now working for a multi national corp with 5000 employees and the worlds largest smelter in Sudbury. We dont work live, ever.... I have been here a year and have not seen a signal instant working live. Other then eliminating a tab of a live bus (bomb suit to cut a wire, #6). and racking in a breaker (bomb suit).... and testing/trouble shooting live ( PPE ) according to an arc flash study of the system.

There is always a time to deenergize systems to work on.

We dont even tie in a new circuit into a panel, we wait till nights, weekend, schedualed shutdowns to be able to do the work.

I may be missin somethin.... please feel free to give me examples of workin live is 100% necessary...

have a goood safe weekend. and next time workin live... just google electrical burns/arcs

The only scenario that working live is actually necessary are the extremely rare times that taking a system off line will be more hazardous than turning it off. When this rare condition actually happens everyone knows that this must be done and proper protocols happen to keep people safe. The problems happen when it really is not mandatory to keep things "ON" but it is very inconvenient, and more to the point the one working at the site sees a minor problem that wrongly thinks that they can fix it without causing a fuss.

An electrician putting in a new circuit in a distribution box, notices that the power feed lines into the panel have loosened the connection to the input feed wires. His designated job does not require manipulating live power, for the job can be completed by wiring to an unseated circuit breaker that then gets snapped into place. But now that this electrician is there, the loose feed connection screw is obvious. In trying to safely tighten this live screw with an insulationg screwdrive, the electrician inadvertently leans so hard on the terminal that it shorts to ground. A trivial task that need not be done has now caused an arc flash explosion.

I like the evolution to "Living"

stick to the point we are discussing safety not the evolution of life

The fellow who is killed by electricution cannot tell you whether it was his dumb or yours that killed him. I have seen plenty of nasty engineering design, particularly in control panels.

I've been around a long time, I trouble shoot automatic switchgear and gensets, early on I looked on appalled as an electrician wet his fingers and checked for voltage "its only 208", I saw the same look on some of my younger fellow workers as I stuck my head in a control cabinet for medium voltage switchgear, they wanted to suit up, control voltage is low, its all what you know

I was on a job site the electrician opened the breaker, checked the load side found it dead, and then put his Allen wrench on the line side burned pretty bad, he sued everyone in the building.

I guess I'm trying to say that, stuff happens, no matter how many rules there are, we should have effective managers who trust and respect the people under them to do the right thing without hamstring them with senseless regulations, we should have training and mentoring so that workers know what they are doing and the consequence's, I'm new here I could go on and on