Everytime I read one of these threads about someone getting hurt or killed, its always followed with the stupid people doing stupid stuff comments. It makes me just wonder how many perfect people out there never make mistakes. I will admit that there are more than a few people running around that just dont get it, or understand the dangers of what they are doing or how they are doing it. Its easy to think "that wont Happen to me because I am smarter than that", but the truth is it can happen to anybody. Its called complacency. You do something long enough and sooner or later you do something with thinking about it, or you take a short cut or get in a hurry, or you get distracted, and next thing you know its you with your fingers missing, or laying in the hospital.
I used to work in a industry that was second only to logging as being one of the most dangerous jobs. I have also seen many tragic accidents that resulted in death and dismemberment. The causes of such accidents where always the result of some stupid action taken by otherwise smart people because of not paying attention to the hazards around them. Had a Division engineer use his finger to trip a limit switch on a tamper head because he thought the switch was stuck. As soon as he triped the switch, the tamper head activated and cut his finger off. Duh, stupid move, every one would know better if they had ever worked around that type of equipment. Think thats bad, had one of his supervisors stick his head in the same area and activate the switch and the tamper head activated, but he was lucky, it only cut his ear off instead of mashing out his brains. Had a coworker get ran over by a train car. he was unloading ballast and instead of stopping the train to climb to the next car, he decided to just jump across. Lost his balance and fell under the wheels. He knew better, rules where in place to prevent this, but he got in a hurry. Stupid move, but not a stupid person, he simply was distracted by his perceived need to be in a hurry. I could mention the friend that stopped his machine at the end of a bridge and climbed off to throw a switch, only thing was he wasnt off the bridge so he climbed out into air and fell to his death. He was looking at the switch and not at the ground, he wasnt a stupid man, he just had his mind on something besides where he was putting his feet.
I may be ranting and rambleing some here, but I just hope all of you people that seem to think others get hurt because they are stupid and your too smart to make such a mistake, dont find out the hard way whether your right or not.
