K7LXC@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 9/18/2010 12:01:11 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
> towertalk-request@contesting.com writes:
>
>> I always free climb, then snap the belt when I get where I'm going.
> Been doing it for 20 years or more. There's just one rule -- hold on tight.
>
> Good luck if you have a heart attack or some other medical emergency.
>
> This thread has been going on for a couple of days and no has
> mentioned the fact that what those tower climbers were doing - free climbing
> - is
> illegal. OSHA rules state that you need to be attached to the tower 100% of
> the time.
> As an amateur, you're not subject to OSHA rules but it sure is a good
idea.
re: illegal... There's a subtle difference between regulations and laws.
OSHA creates regulations to implement a more general law. States may
also have regulations and laws. It's not precisely, the case,but one
distinction is that you can go to prison for violating a law, but not a
regulation (although, clearly this isn't totally the case.. but maybe if
you break a rule, you get jailed for breaking the underlying law that
caused the rule to be created)
In the OSHA case, I think the law is a pretty general one of "employers
shall not make employees do dangerous things", and all those pages of
regulations, interpretation letters, etc. are basically defining what is
and is not dangerous.
And as you noted.. occupational situations are different than the
amateur situation.
There's a very different dynamic when you're volunteering to go up for
yourself, vs a potential "climb it or we'll find someone else who will"
(or, for that matter, "if I do this one more thing, I can make some
extra bucks"... there's not always an evil Scrooge beating the employees..)
There are also things that are required in occupation situations because
they have to cover a wider array of circumstances. The HV worker is
working on equipment that they did not build, and may not have detailed
knowledge of, while the amateur might be working on their own gear, and
have a better understanding of the risks, etc., in that (very small)
subset of the situations that a professional HV worker would be expected
to encounter. Therefore, the amateur could be just as safe, while
adopting a subset of the precautions the more general HV worker might use.
In the amateur situation it's more a personal risk acceptance. I think
we all have things we would do for ourselves, but that we would not ask
someone else to do, or that we would object to if encountered in a
workplace situation. Whether it's wise to do so is a whole 'nother
discussion.
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