The Southern View

I love visiting manufacturing plants, it is exciting to me to see goods being made and packed into boxes that are loaded on to trucks. An accident happened at a manufacturing plant I was visiting the week prior to my visit. The way this plant is designed, the office areas are right beside the shop floor where all the activity takes place. Apparently an engineer walked right out of a door and ignored the fact that a 2 ton fork lift was coming and was bumped, not seriously but enough that an incident report was filed and now each and every doorway to the shop floor has a chain you must unhook to step onto the floor and then turn and rehook. Supposedly this makes you more aware of what is happening.

This place seems to be a bit accident prone, a few months ago a lady was injured by a conveyor belt. On one of the mfg lines the conveyor belt was slow and this lady took it upon herself to place her hands under the belt and give a firm tug. Naturally, the belt jerked back and her hands became trapped under the belt and it took 2 hours to disassemble the line to free her. Fortunately she was not injured other than some minor burns but an incident was filed and signs are now placed throughout the facility warning employees not to put their hands or hair under moving conveyor belts.

Yet another incident happened a while back where an employee was cutting up a box that he held in his left hand. He had the top of the box flat against his hand and slashed down with a box cutter that was held by his right hand. Unfortunately, this person was severely injured and had to have surgery to repair tendons and blood vessels. Again, the result was signs being displayed reminding users to be careful when operating sharp objects.

I do understand that signs like the ones mentioned above and the chain are neccessary but part of me can't help but thinking there are some things that people should realize due to common sense.

For instance, have you ever noticed the warning labels on some of the products out there?
(See attached link)

This is my personal favorite:

Cardboard car sun shield that keeps sun off the dashboards warns "Do not drive with sun shield in place"

What in the world happened that caused these poor people to have to put a label like that on
their product?

While looking for wacky labels, I came across one site that had a picture of a tube of Hemoroid
creme that had a warning "External Use Only".

What!?!?!

Did someone decide that this stuff was to be taken orally? Can you imagine the person writing the
complaint letter?

"Dear sirs, I'm sorry to tell you that your product did not work. I also now have the tiniest little mouth that you have ever seen!"

Does anyone know why warnings like these are in place?

That's right...LAWYERS.

If someone starts driving a car with their 'sun shield' still in place and gets into a car accident, they could get a lawyer to sue the company that made the sun shield because they were not warned not to do that!

50 years ago, a Judge would have looked at the defendent and said "You're an idiot." and banged him on the head with his gavel.

It is in my opinion, that warning labels and lawyers are preventing Natural Selection from getting rid of stupid people.

Do you have any 'accident on the job' stories to share?