Natural Selection

Sometimes it seems like a Safety Engineer (like me) is in a constant struggle with natural selection (aka Darwin).  Recent conversations that I have had with people across the industry convince me that well paid mechanical and chemical engineers are just as ignorant of danger as your average middle school drop out construction helper.  Examples of the stuff I deal with every day:

Engineers not realizing that filling a gas pipe with nitrogen to prevent a fire might not be a good idea since someone was also supposed to open up the pipe to inspect it.  If it's filled with nitrogen to the point that it won't catch on fire, guess what's NOT in there.  Oxygen, genius.

A supervisor for a tank cleaning company discharged raw sewege into a tank where 2 employees were working, killing them.  Details are unclear, but it appears that the supervisor did not give adequate warning to the employees that she would be draining lines into the tank.

Engineers decided not to install a guardrail around a tank of water that was almost constantly around  200 deg. F (95 deg. C).  The engineers decided that the guardrail would interfere with production.  Unfortunately an employee fell into the water and later died from his injuries.

A forklift driver was wearing a full body fall protection harness while operating the forklift and had his seatbelt on.  The lanyard of the harness was dragging on the ground and when the forklift ran over the lanyard it pulled the driver out of his seat, running over his head over and killing him. 

A supervisor drilling into the 220 electrical feed line on his house, "vaporizing" the drill bit he was using.  He did not realize that the resistance he was feeling was the electrical conduit, and not a framing nail.  He was not injured because of the double insulation on the tool, but had huge bills for repair as he started a fire inside his walls.