Dennis and All -
Common sense and what I will term legitimate safety warnings are
in fact wise and useful.
Where we go off the deep end is with such "Required" warnings as
not to use your hair dryer in the shower and/or tub. Do not place
your hands/feet under a lawn more that is running. There are
literally hundreds and even thousands of these sort of warnings,
mandated by lawyers because some dim bulb did not have the common
sense NOT to use a hair dryer in the tub.
It doesn't take eight pages to warn you not to spray WD-40 in your
eyes, mouth, nose, or any other opening in your body, or to not
spray it on an open flame, or not to spay it in a bag and then
breath in the fumes, etc.
There comes a point where the individual needs to be responsible
for their own safety and well being and not sue the manufacturer
because they or a departed love one was an idiot when it comes to
common sense.
Steve
On 02/25/2013 17:49, Dennis Tillman wrote:
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Some very
intelligent engineers have died as a result of an
unexpected encounter with HV due to no fault of their
own. They aren¡¯t here to speak in favor of the 8 pages
of warnings that accompanied the can of WD40 that was
derided in the first email of this thread. We have no
way of knowing if one of those engineers might have
lived as a result of reading those warnings. I worked
around some nasty chemicals once and if it weren¡¯t for
the Material Safety Data Sheets (is this another
example of what one forum member sarcastically
described as ¡°your tax dollars at work¡±?) the
management would have been able to tell us everything
was fine and there was nothing to worry about.
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I know of one
brilliant electronics engineer (numerous patents) who
drilled through a stud into a live wire while holding
an electric drill in his hand in a crawl space. He was
electrocuted. It shouldn¡¯t have happened. A series of
highly unlikely events had to all be present
simultaneously for it to happen. I can easily see
myself in the same circumstances. I have an old very
powerful ?¡± drill from the 1950s that is all metal.
The case may or may not be properly grounded ¨C I never
checked. I have drilled into walls while kneeling on
the earth under my house just like the dead
electronics engineer.
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During a recent
remodel I saw my contractor nailing 1 ?¡± x 3¡± steel
plates onto our wall studs. When I asked what he was
doing he explained it was code to put these plates
anywhere someone could possibly drill through the stud
into a wire that was snaked through the stud. That was
a building code requirement that increased the cost of
my house and I¡¯m sure there are plenty of contractors
that were against it saying sarcastically: ¡°Your tax
dollars at work¡±. It is easy to take pot shots when
you don¡¯t understand the purpose of the regulations.
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That engineer
would probably be alive today if his house had those
plates on the studs. He is not a candidate for a
Darwin Award. Just the opposite, he designed a fair
amount of the oscilloscope technology we all love.
Some laws were written to protect us from making a
fatal mistake even if we don¡¯t think we need their
protection.
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Dennis
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