Enforcing Safety Rules 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
I guess everyone does rise to their level of incompetence. Here is one such story from a personal encounter. Maybe the Peter Principle should be renamed the Darwin Principle. You know: "People will rise to their level of incompetence, at which time they will display it in a really stupid way to get hurt / maimed / killed."
As a firefighter in Halifax, we often are called on industrial accidents to back up paramedics. One such call was for a worker who had fallen from a height of four stories. We were first on scene, and found a man laying beside a partially finished apartment complex. He had indeed fallen from the roof of the structure, and although he dislocated his hip and had injuries to ligaments in his knee, the fact that he landed on a slope which was made of fresly laid topsoil and sod probably saved his life. It was his reason for falling that made us shake our heads.
Apparently this man was the supervisor of the work crew on the roof. It turns out he wanted to check to see if everyone was wearing proper fall arrest harnesses and lanyards, so he went to a fourth floor window and climbed out onto the roof. As he wasn't wearing any fall protection, well, you could see this coming. The sudden acceleration to the ground floor probably reminded him that while he may have felt managment personnel should be exempt from safety rules, no one is exempt from the law of gravity.
Submitted on 08/01/2002
Submitted by:
Anonymous
Reference:
personal experience
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