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2 Comments

  1. Victor Raymond
    February 9, 2018 @ 6:27 am

    Very interesting story and unfortunately far too common.

    When is was studying to get my pilots licenses it soon became apparent that each rule or regulation was preceded by loss of life. The way to stay alive in that world of high velocity in three dimensions was to follow the rules as if your life depended on it.

    I remember on adage, “there are old pilots and bold pilots but not old bold pilots.” I will confess to have violated the rules on occasions but never twice as to make a habit of it.

  2. Mike
    February 9, 2018 @ 9:30 am

    What many people either forget or loose track of is that many codes, rules, regulations and such were originally written in blood, people died for that rule. If you work in most industries long enough and look at rules you can many times figure out who died for that rule or in one case I knew the person that died for new standard operating procedures for maintaining equipment with stored energy.

    The Coast Guard has a very formal risk assessment procedure they go through before each mission to identify specific risks and the overall risk for a particular mission. That process came about after the Coast Guard lost too many people and equipment. I have talked with CG people that have had to do Next of Kin Notifications, (when a member died) and everyone made it their mission to never be required to do another NOK again.

    Those that do not pay attention are doomed to repeat the past accidents. Wish I had a dollar for every time someone made an error and when I pointed out the correct way to do something and they said to the effect “so that is why we should do things that way (to code or best practices)”

    The codes and standards are there for a reason.