Thread: worker safety, but come on !this was ridiculous

More and more, we live in a nanny state

not to mention the cost to the worker who gets killed because someone didn't obey the road rules

Yes, but look at the flipside. Stand on a road and let cars wiz past you at 60, 80 or even 110 and see how vulnerable you feel. I have done it and believe me when cars or worse trucks do not slow down it scares you witless. Granted most of mine have been in 60 or 20 zones, but not everyone slows anyway and I have had triple road trains come into a 20 zone at 80 and when you are inches away from the truck it is not nice.

I don't mind the speed zones for workers safety, and try to obey them. The one that does annoy me is when the "END ROADWORK" sign is a km up the road - or worse still not there at all.

I think Qld police patrol these areas more than any others I have come across - especially at night when all the workers have knocked off.

Erich.

Those sorts of OH&S requirements are not exactly new. Although it wouldn't have been called OH&S back then.

In the mid 70s, I was part of a crew working on pulling up some unused railway line to an old silo somewhere between Narrabri and Moree.

Because we were working within something like 20 metres of the main railway line, we had to have detonators set on the line and a railway employee stationed there all day to act as some sort of flagman for passing trains.

As we were close to 20 metres from the line, I thought at the time that it was a bit over the top.

Originally Posted by Bundalene

I don't mind the speed zones for workers safety, and try to obey them. The one that does annoy me is when the "END ROADWORK" sign is a km up the road - or worse still not there at all.

I think Qld police patrol these areas more than any others I have come across - especially at night when all the workers have knocked off.

Erich.

Don't get me wrong I religiously obey the signs as I believe in safety and don't want to get a fine. But the distances they start the 40 kph speed limits from where the workers actually are is a joke, that's why a lot of other drivers seem to ignore them as they get impatient driving long distances at that speed. An then tail gate, doing the speed limit, Let's face, school zones don't even have that long a 40 kph restriction zone. And then the end of road work signs are a long way from the workers also...... It would be nice sometimes if they taker the signs away when they are not working. How many times have we driven at very low sppeds and no one is even on site

The trouble is that when they set limits that are ridiculous people get frustrated and ignore them, and the limits become counter productive, and you lose more safety than you gain. But the human pendulum swing reigns supreme. We human beings find it difficult to find that right balance between safety and the nanny state. We go from being dangerous to being so flamin careful we can't move anymore. And then back again!

Willem

http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/doingbusin...3section8i.pdf