Nemo Duspy - Author

But all it takes is one time for you to slip up and suddenly the grinder disk that would have gotten stuck in your safety glasses is in your eye, or you're getting treated for lung cancer because you didn't want to wear your respirator while you welded. These are decisions that you were free to make, but might seriously regret later on.

People will scream until they're blue in the face about how oppressive it is to have to wear a safety vest and hard hat on a construction site, but do you really think that the hammer that slipped out of your buddy's hand is going to take that into consideration when it collides with your skull?

• every safety rule is written in blood

• OSHA exists so the boss can't force you to die for their profits. it was started as a result of union action, as a direct response to the triangle shirtwaist factory fire. OSHA is constantly fighting for worker's rights and protection. whistleblower laws protect any employee who makes an OSHA complaint against their employer, and anyone who reports is guaranteed anonymity and aggressive legal support against retaliation. there is also a separate health and safety administration for miners in the USA called MSHA.

• the people most likely to get hurt on the job are not apprentices or senior workers approaching retirement. the new hire is careful because they're green, and still learning, and still unfamiliar with the tools and the work. the old hand is careful because retirement is within sight and they want to make it there. the person who gets hurt is usually the journeyman at the peak of their career—in their 30s-50s, an expert at their trade, their tools feel like an extension of themselves, and they're so comfortable they forget to be careful. they've gotten lucky cutting corners or using something incorrectly or taking off a guard or leaving off some safety equipment 1000 times but one day they're tired or distracted or too comfortable or too confident and the luck runs out.

• some accidents you cannot just avoid with skill, or you have no personal control over them. sometimes you have to trust your coworkers with your life. the big blue crane collapse killed three ironworkers who were on an observation platform, doing other work, far from the crane, with no ability to prevent or escape the collapse. the crane collapsed as a result of being operated despite adverse conditions, despite the normal crane operator refusing to run the crane due to adverse conditions making it unsafe, and was filmed because a safety inspector was recording the violation and attempting to stop it. the operator of the crane got out safely, but three ironworkers who were hundreds of feet away, who didn't know the crane would be operating despite unsafe wind speeds, and who were trapped in midair anyways with no way to avoid or escape the collapse, and who above all just had to trust that everyone on the job site would be working safely and doing their jobs correctly, died. that footage has been used in every OSHA training i have ever been in.