Using a lathe

The Health & Executive became so fed up with being wrongly blamed for all manner of silly local restrictions and excuses that it mounted a publicity campaign to persuade people to understand the basic Law - and use Common Sense!

Among its posters was a cartoon painting of two children dressed in all sorts of PPE, to play conkers. This was just after some headmaster somewhere reckoned the game broke H&S legislation. The poster's text remarked that wilfully hitting your opponent with the conker might be dangerous - but that's a school disciplinary matter!

Sometimes I wonder if over-eager isolation of children from genuinely hazardous situations or equipment actually has the opposite to intended effect. I fear preventing them from understanding the nature of the hazards and risks so they can face the situation or use the equipment safely under supervision, means they are far more likely to have an accident when let loose as unsupervised adults.

Nigel, I've been thinking the same thing for a long time.

When I was young a warning was given to not touch, if I touched and it hurt I was told "you wont do that again"

Obviously not allowed to play with or do anything too stupid but the lessons were learned and I grew up with everything still attached.

We all had a small pen knife when I was young and I cant recall a single stabbing, other than with a compass point in tech drawing. But a 15 year old niece sliced off a finger tip whilst washing up and tearfully declared that she didnt expect the knife to be sharp!

Other notable deficiencies involved animals, where a young constable bitten by a furry land shark (police K9 officer) thought it would not bite someone in uniform and a mounted officer had his thumb end removed by a horse when he ignored advice about keeping his hand flat when issuing the regulation polo mint (other mints are available).

Wrapping kids in cotton wool and telling them the symptoms for every malady they might suffer from is not a good idea. I was behind a 12 year old at A&E when I went in for my back OP. His mum insisted he be examined as he had banged his thumb on the table yesterday and it still hurt. She was scared there could be something seriously wrong with him, despite being able to bend it with no pain when asked. No wonder the NHS is struggling.

Regards Mick

Obviously everyone has different experiences but all I can say is my children and their friends spend time boating on the river, hiking in the Dales and further afield, they do the same sorts of science experiments I did. Other kids I know are actively involved in big scale engineering in their own time.

I just don't recognise this "H&S culture gone mad" thing. Yes, kids are encouraged to be safe and adults to be responsible which of course involves some extra effort. As a parent I would expect no less.

I think the idea of "what's the worse that could happen, a few cuts and bruises" is also wrong. My dad's experience alone at school in the 1950s - one boy messing around and ran onto the track during javelin, which went straight through his leg. Another boy practicing pole vault alone at lunch break, it snapped in half and impaled him, and he was killed. I was reading a report the other day of a guy machining steel stock in a CNC lathe with 3ft sticking out of the chuck unsupported. It jammed on the cutting tool and bent at 90 degrees. The operator heard the noise, turned round and stepped straight into the flailing bar. The coroner's report was death caused by multiple blunt force traumas to the head and torso. So learning by trial and error wasn't too effective in that case.

I feel the same, but can't find much evidence to support it. You would expect being 'far more likely to have an accident when let loose as unsupervised adults' to show up in the statistics, and I don't think it does. The reason may be the strong emphasis placed by most employers on training and supervision at work.

Inexperience isn't the only issue. What causes accidents hasn't changed much:

• Inattention due to tiredness, boredom, booze, distractions, irritability, old age etc.
• Poor training, bad advice, inability to change, incompetence, and lack of imagination
• Bravado, horseplay, stupidity, bad habits, pride, and a misplaced sense of personal immunity. (Real men don't wear ear-defenders!)
• Rushing, ignoring risks, cost cutting, wrong tools & materials, bad design, planning failures and short cuts
• Novelties, surprises and mistakes (your own and others)
• Acts of God

Another problem is chaps experienced in one environment seriously underestimating the risks in another. Being good at one thing doesn't make you good at everything else. Unfortunately knowing about machine tools doesn't make you safe on a roof, or a good judge of electrical and chemical hazards, or an expert on risk assessment. Overconfidence can be fatal.

When you're young and foolish bad things only happen to other people. I know better now.

Dave

It is a different world these days.

When I was young, I recognised risks on the farm - beware of cows (and even ewes) with new-born offspring, the bull, the fan rotating at full speed (and more!) right next to where my job was to replace the governor rod (when it came off the standard fordson and the engine over-speeded), not to get on or off a moving tractor, etc. These days many young ones only have experience of an X box console, where crashes occur while they race in their games, but a restart puts everything back with all the cars in perfect condition. No cost of failure.

I have encountered year 9 students who have never left the city limits in their lifetime and were not really aware of where milk came from - apart from in bottles or cartons!

SOD raises a good one " lack of imagination" this seem very prevalent these days. I deal with failure analysis and environmental / performance testing as part of my day job. Few engineers seem to be able to imagine what might go wrong or the consequences of the failure,. Some of it is down to experience, but they don't seem to be taught what my wife (an educator from the USA) calls "critical thinking". Many just accept any old rubbish on the net or even data/specification sheet. If a tolerance /rating/ performance figure isn't on the data sheet it's probably because it's not very good. A classic and repeated, electrical one is the metal clad "25 Watt" resistor which is only rated at about 7W unless it's on a foot square aluminium sheet or similar heatsink and even then gets to over 100 degrees C.

Curiosity starts at an early age and I think it's wrong to restrict it due to mis-placed safety worries.

It's also not just schools that restrict use of machine tools. As an "office worker" My employer says I can't use even a pillar drill because I don't have the correct "skill code" and enforces it by locking up the tools. This is despite being a qualified engineer (OK avionics, but the formal training did include machine tools) and using a fully equipped prototype machine shop at my previous employer.

Robert G8RPI.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 01/07/2019 12:53:17

A friend of mine is a Managing Director in an investment bank, he tells me his bonus is tied to the number and severity of outages in his domain. His simple answer is to tightly scrutinize all changes and reject all but the absolute minimum ie mandatory software upgrades, patches and functional changes his business users scream for

Risk management is more about perception than reality, as many risks cannot be quantified, no change does not equal no risk, but for some, it's close enough

It is impossible to impart a healthy respect for machinery unless one becomes hands-on familiar with its operation and potential dangers, we are not doing the next generations any favours by keeping them away from perceived dangers, much better they hang around the streets causing mischief...