Reply #3: For some reason, government workers seem to have a very blase [View All]

[hedgehog]

attitude toward safety. I personally know of workers from 3 different jurisdictions (county, city and state university) who failed to properly reinforce ditches they were digging. In one case, a man was buried up to the waist when the ditch collapsed. He's OK, but in another case, the fellow who was buried was pushed against a live steam pipe and ended up dying from his burns. The incident where the fellow dies happened 10 miles away and two weeks before the incident with the city workers!

Industrial workers tend to be a little bit more safety aware because large corporations are very aware of worker's comp costs and OSHA fines, so they take the effort to train their people. Construction companies don't generally put their people through the same training. Farmers are the worst - they're usually working for themselves with older equipment lacking modern safeguards.