15.12.2016
When a rule gets in the way
We have received a copy of a video taken this week in Indiana, USA where the minimum cordoning-off rule of a cable and communication company is obeyed blindly, with a total disregard for why the cones need to be put out in the first place.
The men using the bucket trucks – employed by Comcast - are warned of the chaos they are causing having to set their bucket trucks up just over the brow of a hill in icy conditions.
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Working just over a brow of a hill on icy roads with just four cones - "cos that's the rule"
The men repeatedly ignore those telling them and seem oblivious to the fact that several cars have skidded off the road, one just misses ploughing into the back of the truck, and finally a couple of accidents occur – all captured on camera. It seems that as long as they have followed the rule – one cone per 10 miles and hour speed limit - they do not care, even though they are putting their lives in danger.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
UPDATE
A spokesman for Comcast Cable has issued a statement saying:“When I watched this video I was very concerned by what I saw. Our employees should always protect people and treat them with respect no matter what the situation. Safety matters most – especially in dangerous weather conditions like this. We are actively investigating what happened when our technicians were on site to restore services during an outage and we will reach out to those who were impacted by this incident."
“Within the next 24 to 48 hours, my team leaders will meet with our technicians across our company to use this as an example of how important it is to make everyone’s safety a priority in everything we do. And just as important, there’s no place for disrespect – treating people the right way is the only way to work.”
ghost
I agree in part with no nick... Some of those cars WERE going to fast but when risk assessing a job, you have to plan the job to the absolute worse case scenario - in this case, people driving like absolute idiots ie - too fast. On the one hand, you can blame the motorists for driving too fast (stopping distances are multiplied by 2 for wet conditions and by 10 for icy conditions.) but on the other hand, the cable company employees have only done the bare minimum for the job. The idiot in the cherry picker (yes he is an idiot for the following reason!!) said the speed limit is 40 along there - so on the stopping distance rule, surely his cones/signs etc should maybe placed 10 times the distance from his vehicle? Common sense says if you are working on one side of a rise, you place adequate signage etc the other side of the rise to give ample warning to motorists. Had I been their boss, they'd have been read the riot act for not exercising some common sense and placing warning signs etc before the rise so that people aren't suddenly confronted by this as they come over the top.
no nick...
Looking at the video the cones are not the issue. The speed of some of the people going past is just to much...
Large areas of the EU require wintertyres in colder weather to ensure people stay in control of their vehicle. The majority of the people in this video do not appear to have these fitted to their car. If they did they wouldn't be in a ditch!
We have rules on what TM we use in the UK. There are warning signs we have to put out further from the working area then these guys in the US say they need. But if that is the legal requirement, then maybe a a larger part of the blame lies with the drivers of the vehicles which (in the UK at least) should always be in control of their vehicle and maintain a speed that allows them to stay in control and is not greater then the speed limit...
Moral of the story: wintertyres are much cheaper then crashing and injuring yourself or others.
Eric L
Pure insanity.. and they guy in the truck just does not give a f*-k!
I like their 1 cone per 10mph limitation.. what is spacing on those cones, because 40mph-0 in 10 yards looks optimistic in the dry, let alone there.
It's the world we live in now, the "not my problem, I've done my job" mentality taken to the extreme. Had he not thought for an instant that one of those out of control cars might hit the boom truck he was in...