Geared up for safety

While watching a fellow worker put on their copious safety gear I was reminded of a scene from the old film Kat Ballou. In the movie the aged gunfighter played by Lee Marvin is going through the process of gearing up for an impending gunfight. The amount of gear he puts on borders on the rediculous but that is the point that they are trying to make. All he really needs is his gun. That scene is also a fun little poke at the old books about the Knights of the round table. In those books the knight was always dressed for battle by a squire. It transformed him from being a normal looking man to being seemingly impenetrable.

Safety gear and those things on the 'absolute' list of things to wear are kind of like that. Some pieces, like the hard hat for instance, are things no iron worker would leave at home regardless of whether it was necessary or not. I have personally banged my hat on lots of low roofs this job and imagine that it has 'saved me' many times. To the safety folks though all of are gear is necessary and makes us somewhat impenetrable.

Some of the safety gear requirement are knee jerk reactions to some injury or other. I think having us wear 'stripes' and 'yak traks' fall into this category. With the stripes (fluorescent striping so that you can be seen at night) probably became an absolute when someone was hit by a vehicle as a result of not being seen. But that 'not being seen' probably happened at night. Now we have to wear those stupid things whenever we work day or night. The problem is that they get caught on everything you walk past and I have personally almost been flung from a ladder as a result of such a hookup. I have caught it on scaffolding, on materials, on ladders and on doors. It is far more dangerous than not wearing it at all. Besides, they get dirty so quickly that they wouldn't reflect light anyway.

Having to wear yak traks over our boots is the same sort of thing. Someone probably fell on ice so a safety Whig came up with these as a solution. The fact that even the packaging that they come in warns that on any surface other than snow these become dangerous must have missed their eye. As anyone who has worked in construction knows there are hundreds of different surfaces on every site. And according to said packaging they are all dangerous if walked on with these so called safety items.

I have a feeling that behind all the safety insanity lies Workers Comp. I bet every time someone gets injured the comp payments go up unless one of the safety fools can think up a brilliant solution. Pretty soon we will have kickstands on our work boots and Darth Vader helmets! Our gloves will be made of steel and we will wear chain link to protect our chests and legs. And pretty soon we will need a squire to dress us in all this shit. So thinking back to our knight of old I ask you this: is safety gear moving forward or backward?