[SEL] Nat Rally Reg's New Letter

Jim French fbi at insulate.co.uk
Wed Sep 15 02:37:59 PDT 2004


Just so that all of you who are descending to the level of personal abuse know
that THE FLAMEMISTRESS is watching you, I thought I'd just add a comment or two
to this.

First, the Medina accident.  For full details, go to
http://www.steamengine.com.au/misc/safety/medina.html which also includes a link
to the official report.  Interestingly, when I put the query into Google, that
page by Paul Pavlinovich came up first, and the second was a comment by our own
Reg Ingold, in the digests of this list!
At the time, the steam engine wasn't in a fenced compound, so in that particular
case, fences didn't make any difference at all to the level of injuries.

Secondly, in my opinion (which may or may not reflect my political leanings) I
believe that no amount of laws and rules will EVER combat stupidity.  All these
restrictions seem to do is reduce the freedom and pleasure we get, and take away
some of the need to think.  If there's a fence around the engines, there's no
need for people to tell their children not to touch the moving parts.  If they
ever come across a real working engine, unfenced, how are they to know to keep
back a safe distance?
Rules are no substitute for common sense, but they do take away a lot of the
need for such a thing so, in a way, rules actually increase the potential for
stupid behaviour.  This applies not just to engine shows but to many areas of
life.  We, as a company in the construction industry, spend far too much time
and money on health and safety - consultancies, qualifications, risk assessments
etc etc.  None of which proves better than our long-term safety record that we
can do a job well and safely, but if you do all that stuff right and have an
accident you must be able to blame someone else for it!

You may flame me direct at helen at insulate.co.uk if you don't like my opinion.

Dolly

peter ogborne wrote:

> Unfortunately if we want to attend shows we have to abide by the rules.
> There are STUPID people ,take the example of the owner of that Case Steam
> Traction engine in the US . It exploded and took out a lot of people. Just
> think how many more fatalities there would have been if there had been a big
> crowd around it in an unfenced compound . Yes i know that to make it safe
> and escape the results of that explosion the fence would have had to be a
> bloody long way back .

--
Jim French
fbi at insulate.co.uk
http://www.insulate.co.uk





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