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Post by gustav10 on Jan 4, 2017 8:06:38 GMT 12
...But you have to admit, that the drop in unemployment has largely been brought about by the unending requirement for safety & security staff. A surprising number of these appear to have graduated from the more radical paramilitary units of the "free world"(tongue in cheek)... Untold businesses rise ghostlike, in all areas of life, expounding the need for safety at all costs, particularly when they reap the benefits. Common sense has long since departed the scene... I, too am a happy retiree. The paperwork & associated diatribe became too much to bear.
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Post by suthg on Jan 4, 2017 9:04:00 GMT 12
Not much health and safety on the roads last two weeks , every idiot is out there by the toll. Recently towed an unwieldly item of machinery [from Dargaville to Te awamutu] 440 km without seeing an enforcement vehicle ,was actually 100mm wider than legal. As for common sense..bang on Dave So long as you used your over width flags and travelled at less than 90km/hr (trailer/caravan speed 90+4), pulled over like the gentleman you are to let the hordes of speeding/faster traffic pass you by - then you were travelling safely! Sounds like you were lucky!!
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Post by skyhawkdon on Jan 4, 2017 10:10:09 GMT 12
linkThis video clip shows why H&S laws exist. Not much "common sense" being shown by some of these idiots.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 4, 2017 10:43:16 GMT 12
The problem I see there though Don is those types are so ignorant they will not have bothered to look up any regulations to adhere to. The rules are not preventing stupid accidents, they are simply giving the authorities something to point to after the fact, when they are counting up the charges to prosecute the survivors with.
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Post by gustav10 on Jan 4, 2017 14:03:05 GMT 12
Good Point! People have been so dumbed down that continual H&S training is the only point (Little Hope). Everyone is taught that they are winners...When they act like it someone has to be blamed (BUT NOT THEM!) I note with interest that in the clips linked, a number of folk are wearing Hi Viz & hard hats etc...It doesn't make them smart...
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 4, 2017 14:17:50 GMT 12
I have wondered if, psychologically, people who put on the bright vests will subconsciously feel safer in the environment for having done so because they think they're more highly visible, and therefore they will let their guard down and relax their vigilance a little. Do these clothes actually realistically make people less safe?
i.e. had they not taken a standardised safety precaution of putting a vest on before they entered the tarmac, would they take that little bit of extra care in the environment because they have not been pacified? Dunno, it's just a thought...
I'm sure they can just as easily walk into a spinning prop or step into oncoming traffic they didn't hear on the tarmac while wearing a vest as when they're not, and particularly so if they think subconsciously they're safe, therefore introducing a level of complacency.
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Post by suthg on Jan 4, 2017 15:10:14 GMT 12
I think it should act as a reminder that it can be dangerous on the apron and the Hi-viz is there for a reason, and so were the safety instructions given by staff to you prior to entering the area, about where you may stand safely etc, etc. You wear it because of the hazards and risks promotes you to think twice because you have been made aware of the dangers - it is not put it on and it makes you safe attitude - it is think about the risks involved and be wary and act accordingly. The staff have responsibilities to make you aware and they have discharged their duties to tell you.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 4, 2017 15:38:24 GMT 12
But you're talking like you mean for visitors to an area that don't normally go there, and I agree. But people working with the vests constantly? Does complacency creep in with them?
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Post by suthg on Jan 4, 2017 16:59:56 GMT 12
Who tend to have the accidents? Normal staff or volunteers and visitors? I would pose that it is ,more likely the temporary visitors that get in the wrong place at the wrong time... (esp without safety systems in place) ie the normal staff understand the safety issues - they should have been highly trained and aware... OR - does it make them complacent around aircraft due to wearing Hi-Viz, I would hope not. AVSPECS - anyone in the business?
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Post by baz62 on Jan 4, 2017 20:51:51 GMT 12
Not for us as we have a locked in price, any delays it's all on the poor builder. Which is then passed on to the next home buyer. Errrrr how exactly?
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jan 4, 2017 20:58:48 GMT 12
I work in an industry which used to have a horrific toll of dead and maimed workers.
While some of those were due to stupidity, many happened to workers who were working in shunting yards following the proceedures set out in the Traffic Code.
To give but one example, loose shunting in marshalling yards, which was the official way of doing things involved shunting staff stepping between moving wagons to uncouple them on the go. On a regular basis, drawgear used to fail, resulting in the two wagon bodies coming violently together. The result was one crushed worker who was either dead, or horrifically maimed. And that is just one example of many things which used to kill railway workers every year when those workers were merely following proceedures as set out in the Traffic Code and required by the employer.
Things got so bad that the government initiated a ministerial enquiry during the 1990s and the findings of that inquiry resulted in not only a whole lot of offical established practises being banned in the rail industry, but the passing of the Health & Safety in Employment Bill into law which tightened things up right across the board in all workplaces. And it wasn't a Labour Government which initiated that inquiry into the safety of the rail transport industry and introduced and passed into law the Health & Safety in Employment Act either.
In more recent times, the government (not a Labour Government) passed the current Worksafe NZ legislation which has further toughened up considerably workplace safety law. No doubt, later this year, many of you who are moaning about workplace safety law will dutifully vote for the same political party who has enacted both the original H&S legislation in the 1990s and the more recent Worksafe NZ legislation.
And BTW....as regards hi-viz clothing....as a locomotive engineer, I can tell you that it used to be hard to spot track workers amongst the background clutter while running trains at speed. These days, they stand out a mile or more away and instantly get one's attention. We use a “see and be seen and acknowlege you have been seen” system of signalling each other with locomotive horn signals and hand-signals, or sometimes just plain eye contact followed by acknowlegement. When you are charging through somebody's worksite at 90-100km/h, for those workers on the site, being seen is one of the ways you stay alive.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 4, 2017 21:45:18 GMT 12
Which is then passed on to the next home buyer. Errrrr how exactly? Simple, they put their price up a little to cover the losses of the last job.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 4, 2017 22:09:29 GMT 12
Bruce, forgive me if I am wrong, but as well as the addition of brightly coloured vests, would the lowering of the accident rate in the railways also be attributable to the drug testing in the workplace in the modern era so the workers are no longer stoned on the job and therefore much less likely to have a stupid accident? Maybe even a clamp down on working while under the influence of alcohol too (the beers at lunch scenario). And, perhaps better communication devices nowadays for workers to talk to each other around a yard so misunderstandings are lessened? And maybe also a higher standard of education among the workers compared with the olden days? Are they not all contributors to a safer work environment?
Your scenario of the railways is all well and good, I doubt anyone would dare question the good that has been done by H&S legislation of all sorts to the railways industry, and to many other industries across the country. But your's is an industry that was riddled with problems, as you freely admit, with regular accidents and deaths. The main point Peter was making when he started this is quite different, regulations being applied to something that has not got a problem in the first place. How many people have been killed or badly injured on NZ airport aprons in past decades? As far as I am aware it is a VERY small number, and the only case I can think of is a girl who walked into the spinning prop of her own aircraft after stepping out of it to run to see her Dad (in fact I am not even sure if that was in NZ, someone will confirm), but no regulations will ever have stopped that happening, only better education of the individual - but she was a passenger, not a worker or airport regular, so it's even harder to quantify it.
Can you see what people are saying? While we acknowledge the good that the regulations do in many industries and workplaces, sometimes they are over-applied in places they are simply not needed, it's simple as that.
I also don't think it matters which government brought in the regulations or which government tweaks and adds to them, whoever it was was acting responsibly towards the workforce - a very good thing - and I'd be very surprised if any MP's in government or opposition would oppose such moves on the wider scale. But virtually every piece of legislation has fall out in some sectors that is unwarranted and unneeded - such as H&S regs making it hard for small businesses, and the likes of aero clubs, sports clubs and all manner of other things. It is natural that many sectors will not appreciate the effects of the H&S rules being applied where they're not actually needed at all.
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Post by planewriting on Jan 4, 2017 23:03:55 GMT 12
I couldn't agree with you more Dave. What Kiwi Throttle Jockey has described above is how improvements have been made in railway yards. Fair enough. None of us would disagree that improvements were necessary in that or in many other industries. However,contributors are comparing apples with oranges.
We must go back as to why Peter started this thread off. His concerns are that there is a danger that people will be put off being Aero Club members because of changes being enforced where no problem had existed and the compulsory wearing of high viz vests was not necessarily going to prevent accidents. Have we ever in New Zealand had a case where someone has been run over by an aircraft on an apron because the pilot did not see them? I am not aware of any but I could be wrong. The idea of the vest is to be readily seen. How is a such a vest going to stop people (vest or no vest) walking into propellor blades in an absent minded moment? The answer is, they won't. How about all future contributions to this thread be directly linked to what Peter described initially?
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Post by baz62 on Jan 5, 2017 7:48:21 GMT 12
Simple, they put their price up a little to cover the losses of the last job. Then they'll price themselves out of the market. It's wins and losses. Sometimes they make money on a job and sometimes they lose. Cost of doing business. A lot of House building firms sub contract to another builder as in our case. It's the same in our engineering business you are expected to do a job cheaper and quicker than someone else. Technology helps in some areas but it's all about competition.And if you make a mistake it's on you not the customer and certainly not put on the next one. The only reason that might happen is an increase in the cost of raw materials or maybe labour but every business is different.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jan 5, 2017 8:28:37 GMT 12
The industry I work in was by one of many industries with horrific death and injury tolls due to workplace accidents. To name but a few, mining, forestry, port operations, freezing works, FARMING, and many, many others.
While a tiny handful of accidents may have been due to pissed workers, the majority of those accidents were due to a combination of macho culture (ie....I'm bulletproof) and operating practices which left absolutely no margin for when the shit hit the fan. As with the case of drawgear failures on wagons in shunting yards. I can remember working in the old Napier marshalling yard in the mid-1970s and it was a bloody dangerous place. The individual tracks were really close togeter and the entire yard was on a curve from one end to the other. So you were shunting around a curve where, from the locomotive, you couldn't see what was happening at the end of the rake of wagons being shunted. The shunter at the coalface was signalling another shunter, who was signalling another shunter, who was signalling the locomotive crew, using hand-signals by day and multi-colour lantens at night. And there were up to three shunts working the same yard at times, two from one end of the yard and one from the other end. All shunting was loose shunting (that was the official established practice), so shunters were climbing onto and off moving rakes of wagons at up to 20km/h with very narrow gaps on either side to the adjacent roads. When something went horribly wrong, there was a rapid chain-reaction and a lot of workers were caught in the middle and unless they had lightning reactions, a lot of bad stuff would occur.
You may or may not know of Workers' Memorial Day. It was first started in NZ by railway workers (it already existed in other countries), then adopted by workers in many other industries. We have memorial monuments and rolls at many locations around the NZ rail system and some of those rolls have disgustingly long lists of names of railway workers who were killed in the line of duty. Workers' Memorial Day is April 28th, three days after Anzac Day. We hold workers' memorial services on that day at the various memorial monuments and rolls, just like Anzac Day services and in the rail transport industry, they are very well attended, both by current workers and by former railway workers.
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Post by Mustang51 on Jan 5, 2017 8:51:55 GMT 12
Common sense died with the Wooly Mammoth ! Right on Dave
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Post by Ian Warren on Jan 5, 2017 8:52:38 GMT 12
My brother drove tour buses last season as a fill in job, the company sold up because of H&S putting in ridiculous rules. The tour bus driver, when off loading passengers, has to wear a day glow orange vest. Where I live has become a huge Chinese concern with restaurants. This is on Brake and Leslie Streets. In the last four years, today for example, we will see between 6 to 7 dual axle tour buses at lunch time alone, offload the people, they are all over the road photoing the gardens of the neighbourhood and even in the new 'West Link' Chinese mall, you can see easy 50 people wandering around with no idea for their safety ... STRANGE I don't see the tourists wearing Orange or Yellow day-glow vest. Richard told me it is worst in places like Tekapo and Queenstown.
H&S and OSH have really gone mental, companies would rather sell up than have to go through courts. When I was engineering it was common sense. If I saw anybody not with eye protection - for example, sharpening tool bits, I was down on them like a ton of bricks 'Common Sense' , that was before H&S and OSH were even invented.
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Post by craig on Jan 5, 2017 10:52:23 GMT 12
is then inevitably passed on to the poor financially-strapped eventual home buyer. Not for us as we have a locked in price, any delays it's all on the poor builder. Don't count your chickens Baz. Not the first time a builder / building company has declared bankrupt leaving a trail of unpaid creditors not to mention home owners, and it still happens. Stonewood homes rings a bell.
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Post by flyinkiwi on Jan 5, 2017 15:53:34 GMT 12
I was sitting in the pilots lounge a few years ago while a bloke was refueling his Pa28. I then noticed he had someone sitting in the back. I know that it is illegal (see CAR Part 91.15) to have passengers aboard while refueling an aircraft (with AvGas - if your aircraft runs on Jet-A it's permitted). It occurred to me that technically I could be culpable under H&S legislation for inaction if the plane caught fire and the passenger died because I didn't inform the pilot of his obligations under the Civil Aviation Act even though as a NZ Aviation document holder he should be aware of them already.
It erks me that my vigilance could wind me up in court on charges just because some guy doesn't know the rules as well as I do.
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