I haven't posted on this thread in a long time, I find it frustrating to try and guess why something happened. I have mentioned, in the past, that I really don't see any less "accidents" now than I did 30 years ago. I am 100% sold on head protection. I grew up watching guys free climb to the tops of trees and never tying in untill they got to the top. Limb walking, every day. Maybe one reason you hear of more accidents now than way back, is there are so many more tree companies out there. When I was a kid there were only about a dozen tree Co in the the yellow pages, Wash DC Metro area, and 5 or 6 of them were relatives. They all fit on one page. Now there are pages of tree experts. Every Co has a couple rookies. So many more people and chances to get hurt. Back then every climber had a bunch of bad azz scars. I think most came from hanging pole saws above their heads, and having them get knocked off the twig, and raking them as they went by. I'm sure I hear of accidents that are caused by rookies that think if they wear every piece of ppe made they can't get hurt. The one accident that we seldom heard of was someone dying in a chipper accident. Now it's quite frequent. When I met my wife she said my back looked like I was a slave on a Roman Galley, whipped into working. Good old 16" chuck and duck. Usually when I read this thread the responses are similar, the guy was inexperienced, he was a rooky, he was a hack, and for about 50% of the accidents that's true. In most dangerous industries, most accidents are to people with less than 2 years experience, and people with over 20. There seems to be a group in the middle that seldom get hurt. We used to say the ones that were "too dumb" to know better (newbies), and "too smart" to know better (know it all pros).
I think that we've put too much time into "making" people wear ppe and not enough time into "making" them work safe. You can tell a rooky to look up a million times, but it is un-natural act for a person to walk around looking up. It hurts your neck, you can't see your feet. But if you don't look up, you won't see the widow maker hanging there, creating the need for your hard hat. It's hard to teach a rooky to move quickly under a tree. It's hard to teach him to keep the work area clean. If you keep the work area clean you don't have to look down at your feet as much, because there is nothing there to trip on, so you can look up more. Then you have climbers who want to put every thing on the ground as fast as they can so they can take a smoke break while the groundies clean up.
My Dad was one of the safest workers, and safety method trainers, I've ever known. Yet, he had a bad 25 to 30 foot fall, that put him in the hospital for a month. It was back when braided rope was first being used. We still used 3 strand twisted New England safety rope. We had a climber that would meet us at the job site. He was a "no show". Dad showed up in his Cadilac, running estimates, with none of his own gear. We had our climbers gear on the truck, so Dad said he needed a little exercise, and grabbed the other guys gear. Dad's number one rule was "NEVER USE SOMEONE ELSES GEAR". He broke his own rule. After his fall we inspected the braided rope our climber used and found several spots where the inner core had been severed. The climber had a bad habbit of chunking down trees and dropping the blocks on his rope. We figured he must of had the rope laying across a root or something and dropped a block on it, severing the core. That's one reason I NEVER let someone else do up my climbing line. If they do I stretch it back out and rewrap it. I want to run every inch between my fingers as I do it up.
For the record, this little rant has absolutely nothing to do with the OP'er. Since it was a minor injury with no loss of life or limb, I used it as a forum to preach safety as a lifestyle, not a piece of equipment. And, if safety is a lifestyle with you, you'll use the safety equipment. Not the other way around. Do you get my Drift? Thanks, Joe.
