The era of reckless daredevilry among “bridgemen” came to an end with the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, as Chief Engineer Joseph Strauss insisted on a rigid safety code, supported by the latest safety innovations.
Despite the high winds, churning currents, and towering heights that challenged the work, Strauss was determined to buck the industry’s deadly average of one fatality per million dollars spent on a construction project.
“On the Golden Gate Bridge, we had the idea we could cheat death by providing every known safety device for workers,” he wrote in 1937 for The Saturday Evening Post. “To the annoyance of the daredevils who loved to stunt at the end of the cables, far out in space, we fired any man we caught stunting on the job.
According to Stephen Cassady’s Spanning the Gate (pg 104), “The Golden Gate was not the first big job to feature hard hats and safety lines as some have claimed. But it was the first to enforce their use with the threat of dismissal.”
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http://goldengatebridge.org/research/CheatingDeath.php
There's still a lot of "macho" get-the-job-done attitude on many construction sites today and it's bullshit now as it was then.
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