Frank Krygowski writes:

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 11:21:09 AM UTC-4, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:


Oh, I have no doubt it was mandatory for these paving guys to wear
hard hats.
I also have no doubt it was a stupid requirement. Realistically, the guys
biggest chance of a head injury was when he was getting out of his
truck; he
might have bumped his head on the upper edge of the roof.

There was nothing above his head. There would be nothing above his
head except
perhaps some telephone lines during the entire operation.

Did you ever teach a lab class? If so, I'm guessing there a requirement
to wear eye protection at all times. What would you have said if a
student argued that, under the particular circumstances of the day, he
didn't actually need it? Frequently as an employee it just does not pay
(literally) to think for oneself.

One valuable aspect to mandatory hard hats is that it sets those that
are supposed to be on site apart from members of the public that have
just wandered in.

Yes, I taught many lab classes, including an intro to machine shop. Yes, the
rule was "eye protection at all times." But that was mostly because there was
_always_ something happening that justified eye protection. Typically there
would be five lathes running, one milling machine, occasionally a shaper,
one or another saws, etc.

On the first day of class I did an introduction, where I'd explain what each
machine did. For that, the students didn't have eye protection and it wasn't
needed.

You could decide eye protection wasn't needed on the first day in your
role as a supervisor. A student, in his role as a peon, could not do
that without seriously limiting his future career. Valuable life
experience, that.

Regarding the pickup truck driver on the paving operation, I fully
understand the convenience to the management or (more likely) the
insurance company to say "hard hats at all times." In particular,
insurance companies get to impose those sorts of requirements at no
cost to themselves, so their rationale is probably "What the hell, it
_might_ help and it's no skin off our nose."

But to me, when that leads to head protection against phantom hazards, it's
still weird. And it's one of the drivers of "safety inflation."

I almost always wear a seatbelt when in a car. There may be some
instances where the trouble of putting it on does not justify the small
increment in safety that it gives. But the trouble of *thinking about
it* easily outweighs the trouble of putting on the belt.

Logic and reason are wonderful hammers, but every problem in life is not
a nail. Trying to reason out every quotidian choice from first
principles is nuts.