"Health and safety gone mad" - truth or tabloid guff?

[Super Slo Mo]

egor110 said:

In my experience you stamp on the end of the wheel brace, always worked fine for me, then repeat to do them up again.

I agree about side of the roads not ideal to change a tyre , but the flip side is the driver might not want any overtime so who's going to finish his delivery whilst he's sat waiting for the rac.

I used to run a little fleet of transporters, sprinters and LT35's back in the late 90's/early 00's. We couldn't get the wheel nuts undone without a breaker bar. ATS, who were contracted to look after our tyres, until I ditched them for being too expensive, reckoned they were torqued correctly.
I'm no 9 stone weakling, but none of us could undo them with the standard bar.
Your experience is obviously different. I'm not sure why.

[spaximus]

My feeling is that most of the absurdities is the insurance companies trying ever more inventive ways to get blame proportioned.
Classic examples is the sod cutting ceremonies where everyone is in hard hats and hi viz in a field. Unless a plane drops an iced turd where is the danger or need?
The other issue is down to who makes the rules. On our latest branch the site owners laid out every detail of what to wear during construction. The HSE came in for a spot check and told the guy's not to bother with hard hats until the racking arrived. It made the ses jobs so much easier and comfortable and was a common sense approach that everyone was happy with.
The example of the gritting is absurd but we also have to keep a log of gritting on sites just in case. Again common sense should make people realise snow and ice is slippy, people slip it is how it works the world over but somehow certain H&S people see that as unacceptable so you get the do not do anything. People used to clear snow from their paths and in front of their homes, I still do, but the stories of claims puts people off.
I remember as a kid they used to draft people in to shovel snow off pavements etc, now they would need a week training, a week to order appropriate safety gear and the snow will have gone.
We need some danger in our lives. In our local park the kids play area is now installing equipment that kids might get hurt on. Experts have realised we have lost that ability to decide if something is dangerous so they are now using equipment that has built in hazards, like stepping logs over a shallow water feature.
H&S and the money grabbing surrounding it needs to look at the big dangers and leave the minor ones to common sense.

[mph1977]

bobbo89 said:

In a country full of personal injury lawyers and money grabbing knob-heads, businesses and employers have to protect themselves in every way possible!

sums it up

plus the use at various times of things like gettign a problem employere a NEBOSH general and shunting them into a H+S role where they damage they do to the busdiness is minimal

[egor110]

Super Slo Mo said:

I used to run a little fleet of transporters, sprinters and LT35's back in the late 90's/early 00's. We couldn't get the wheel nuts undone without a breaker bar. ATS, who were contracted to look after our tyres, until I ditched them for being too expensive, reckoned they were torqued correctly.
I'm no 9 stone weakling, but none of us could undo them with the standard bar.
Your experience is obviously different. I'm not sure why.

Vauxhall combis, transits,fiat doblos.

You have to be really unlucky to get a puncture on a doblo , there so st there in the garage most the time.

[RizzoTheRat]

Rick_1138 said:

because i have found blanket policies get ignored, if you require ppe in logical places, staff obey the rules instead of ignore them.

It's a shame councils can't reach that conclusion about 30/40 mph speed limits too.

[coppice]

It is also a shame that so many drivers think 30 limits in villages apply only to other people .

[Foliage]

RizzoTheRat said:

Foliage said:

V8 FOU said:

Best response is usually to ask under what section of the Health and Safety legislation they are acting.
Usually confuses them...

MHOR 4(1)(a)

Edited by Foliage on Monday 30th November 12:15

But surely that's impossible without at least one live chicken and a Rabbi?
</Kryten>

Always keep them to hand for just such an occasion

[grumpy52]

Super Slo Mo said:

egor110 said:

In my experience you stamp on the end of the wheel brace, always worked fine for me, then repeat to do them up again.

I agree about side of the roads not ideal to change a tyre , but the flip side is the driver might not want any overtime so who's going to finish his delivery whilst he's sat waiting for the rac.

I used to run a little fleet of transporters, sprinters and LT35's back in the late 90's/early 00's. We couldn't get the wheel nuts undone without a breaker bar. ATS, who were contracted to look after our tyres, until I ditched them for being too expensive, reckoned they were torqued correctly.
I'm no 9 stone weakling, but none of us could undo them with the standard bar.
Your experience is obviously different. I'm not sure why.

One of the scariest things I have done is change a wheel on a lwb sprinter on the hard shoulder of the M25 on a friday evening in the dark .
The jack supplied by merc is the grottyest bottle jack ever and when extended is like a spindle holding up 3.5 tons of wobbly metal as hgv's thunder past 4ft away .
That was a 25min swearing session .

[italianjob1275]

This is the magic box that a major builders merchant insist that lorry drivers stand in whilst unloading. As you can see it's more than capable of fending of an errant forklift...

I've also been told more than once that I can't use the toilets because of health and safety, and I wouldn't be insured

[egor110]

Is that why there's a handy drain cover by the yellow box ?

[hidetheelephants]

italianjob1275 said:

This is the magic box that a major builders merchant insist that lorry drivers stand in whilst unloading. As you can see it's more than capable of fending of an errant forklift...

I've also been told more than once that I can't use the toilets because of health and safety, and I wouldn't be insured

You might sue if you don't shake properly and get a mapatazi, or you slip on a misplaced richard and break your arm(assuming the lavvy is like most industrial ones and has been visited by a homesick former inmate of the Maze).

[neelyp]

egor110 said:

Is that why there's a handy drain cover by the yellow box ?

That's an earth pot.

[Adenauer]

Kawasicki said:

egor110 said:

Kawasicki said:

And if no one wears them, then related accidents are their problem. What exactly is the issue with that?

Rules is rules, good lord.

That's not how it works though, people have accidents not wearing the provided safety equipment and then try to claim of the employer.

Far easier to provide the equipment and make it mandatory all staff wear it , and if they refuse start disciplinary action.

Yep, that is the easiest option, no doubt.

And the one that makes the company inefficient.

Back in 2007 not one of the guys that built my house over here in the Fatherland wore a safety hat, nobody died, and the house was built well, and quickly.

I blame everything on Mary Whitehouse. Everything.

[the_lone_wolf]

I've worked a decade in the civil engineering and construction industry and spent the vast majority of my working life on either live roads or active building sites, so the HSE played an important part of working life.

Far from the typical daily mail style of bemoaning "'ealth and safety gone mad" the majority of sensible people understood the HSE is generally filled with people whose job it is to try and get people to think about how they can make choices that reduce the real risks they are exposed to

I always enjoyed reading the HSE "Myth of the month" section, sadly now discontinued, which addressed the tabloid "health and safety gone mad" scandal du jour

[djt100]

egor110 said:

I work for a delivery company where none of the drivers are allowed to change tyres if there's a puncture.

Instead they have to phone the rac and wait.

Normal for Company van's i think friend company has the same policy, and on having a really siht day once and being pssd at his boss may have hit a nail through a Tyre in revenge

[Otispunkmeyer]

We have very little H&S where we work. Its be sensible. We don't have the man power to spare even for a HR person.

Where I did work, we were doing a job in SA. While the machines were still running it of course made sense to wear ear plugs. It was loud. But when everything was shut down so we could work on it, and it was eerily quiet in there? yep still had to wear ear plugs. And the people paying us for the job hired many people from the townships to snoop about and note us down in their little black books.

More of a ploy to say we weren't meeting expectations so that they could wrangle out of things like paying I guess, but it was funny watching people standing in a quiet hall, having to talk to each other in raised voices and lip read.

[Super Slo Mo]

grumpy52 said:

One of the scariest things I have done is change a wheel on a lwb sprinter on the hard shoulder of the M25 on a friday evening in the dark .
The jack supplied by merc is the grottyest bottle jack ever and when extended is like a spindle holding up 3.5 tons of wobbly metal as hgv's thunder past 4ft away .
That was a 25min swearing session .

I'll bet it was. I helped my dad change the wheel on our caravan on the side of the motorway, back in the late 80's. The caravan was wafting all over the place while we were doing it. Didn't help that we were changing the offside tyre so effectively standing on the white line.

Horrific to think about in hindsight, so many things could have gone wrong.
Still, we lived to tell the tale. .

[TwistingMyMelon]

the_lone_wolf said:

I've worked a decade in the civil engineering and construction industry and spent the vast majority of my working life on either live roads or active building sites, so the HSE played an important part of working life.

Far from the typical daily mail style of bemoaning "'ealth and safety gone mad" the majority of sensible people understood the HSE is generally filled with people whose job it is to try and get people to think about how they can make choices that reduce the real risks they are exposed to

I always enjoyed reading the HSE "Myth of the month" section, sadly now discontinued, which addressed the tabloid "health and safety gone mad" scandal du jour

I agree with this, the "myths" email I got was funny and enlightening

[Negative Creep]

From my work's kitchen

[monkfish1]

I never get why people change tyres in such unsuitable locations. Its just a knackered tyre. Drive on , slowly, to a safer point. Do it there where you wont get killed.