Created: 2010.01.14
In Canada, following the Liberal government agenda always trumps safety.
Parts of this were taken from stuff I published back around 2005, but this page was put together in Jan 2010 as a response to 'recent events' in January 2010.
In Canada we have these people called 'safety officers' and rules for safety. While I believe that SOMEONE along the path REALLY had good intentions. My impression is that political correctness is really what is being promoted and safety is just the excuse for people to get hired and earn money doing things that really have nothing to do with safety.
Here are some of the reasons I believe this.
The first one is the biggest. In my opinion it categorically PROVES that most safety rules in Canada are bogus (I know technically it doesn't), that they REALLY are intended to keep people employed coming up with rules and enforcing them.
When I was building my latest house, I put the nails on board 3" on center. (Oh sorry, this is Canada, I put them 7.62 cm on center)
When the inspector - who was likely in his 60's and said he had been doing inspections for decades, looked at it from 6' away, sorry 1828.8 cm away, he said "Code requires that the nails be no more than 10cm apart. That means, ah, um (as he looked at his fingers apparently counting) well - as long as your nails aren't more than 6 inches apart, they will be fine."
Now ... notice that CODE said 10cm, even though EVERYONE in the construction industry works in feet and inches. But the Liberal Government Pierre Elliot Trudeau, forced everything to be stated in metric in the 1970's
So the safety codes are done in Metric and some bureaucratic idiot decided: Let's NOT also put in the measurement system that everyone uses (feet and inches) let's instead make sure there are lots of mistakes so that inspectors can have jobs.
Notice that 10cm is slightly LESS than 4" and definitely less than 6". Also note that I had used 3" with my staff because I KNEW 4" was too big so 3" would meet the code.
Notice the inspector simply assumed I wouldn't understand the metric AND for those not bi-measural, he told me it was OK if I had them every about 15.24cm when code said they couldn't be more than 10cm apart.
I politely told him "10cm is actually just under 4", and I have them every 3 to 3 and a half inches." He muttered something about idiot code writers not writing so that people could understand, and thanked me for doing it correctly.
Side note: if you are reading this from a country that everything THINKS in Metric, you may be wondering why this is a safety concern. But from a country like Canada where every carpenter and trades worker THINKS in feet and inches - because everything is sold and works in multiples of feet and inches - not cm or m, the code is DANGEROUS. It causes mistakes.
I had an employee working a backhoe. When I saw how close he was to the overhead power lines I asked him what he was doing, why he was so close to the power lines. He QUOTED to me the safety rule, telling me EXACTLY how far he was supposed to be away. I then asked him "so how far are you".
Here is how it went.
He quoted: I have to be 15 Meters away. (Correct. He quoted the code he had learned in school perfectly)
I asked: How far is that?
He replied: Ah, it's about 30 feet.
I asked him "How far is 30 feet"
He replied: About 2 car lengths.
How far away are you?
A bit more than 30 feet.
I got him out of the equipment and we proceeded to measure everything.
2 car lengths of cars we had right there was indeed almost exactly 15 feet. So even his 'rule of thumb' for the English measurement was correct.
He was about 35 feet away from the power lines.
Here is the problem ... 15 meters is about 50 feet.(49.216). So he was WAY too close even though he was sure he had a few feet margin of error available to him.
So, he had MEMORIZED the safety rule PERFECTLY. But his brain works - like 90% of Canadians - in Feet, not Meters and his conversion skills were normal (terrible) and his rules of thumb were learned in Feet, not in Metric - because that's how everyone talks in Canada when the government isn't interfering.
So because the politically correct idiots in charge of so called safety standards REFUSE to allow the standards to be expressed in anything other than metric - THEY put my friend's life in danger. They care MORE about following the Liberal Government Agenda and being politically correct than they do about safety. Conclusion: the Safety regulations are more a way to keep people employed through confusion and a way to push a political agenda than they are about Safety.
A trained safety officer came to my construction site. We had put a ladder in the bucket of a backhoe because the location the ladder had to go was muddy and therefore dangerous. He insisted that we take my staff's life at risk and put the ladder where it was insecure because the safety rules 'required' it. I showed him how dangerous his solution was and he said it didn't matter that it was safer, what mattered was that the rules are the rules and as long as I followed the rules I would be OK from a LEGAL perspective even if 'technically it is more dangerous.'
My solution: I refused to put my staff's life in danger by following the rules. But I'm not going to tell you how I solved the problem for 'legal' reasons. Maybe I followed the rules, maybe I just did it in a safer way. I'm not going to tell. All I'll tell you is that my staff PROBABLY would have been injured if we had followed the rules and done nothing else.
My point here: The safety officer AGREED that the code was dangerous, he would NOT let us do it the SAFE way, but he was unconcerned if we did it the dangerous way ... as long as we followed the rules.
Conclusion: It's about following a political agenda, not about Safety.
In Canada it is against the law to tailgate.
Tailgating is when one vehicle follows less than 2 seconds behind (some say less than 3 seconds behind.) The people behind the law claim the purpose is to 'save lives by avoiding rear-end accidents'.
I have seen accidents and the aftermath of accidents in both Canada and China as well as several other countries.
I have noticed that in countries where there is a law (that is more or less followed) against tailgating, that when a rear end accident occurs, it is a really nasty accident. Consider this. You are driving along at 55mph in your F150 truck with really good braking power, you can stop in 4 seconds. Behind you is a loaded cement truck that takes two to three times the distance to brake that you do. You see something in front of you and you hit the brakes. The cement truck is 3 seconds behind you and the driver is paying attention, looking out his front window then his side mirrors then his gauges then out the front window. The cement truck notices 1 second after you hit the brakes that you are stopping. You are now going 41mph. It proceeds to apply the brakes, but by the time it applies the brakes you are now going 35mph while it is still going 55mph, but there is still space between the two of you. You proceed to slow down from 35mph to 21mph while in the same time the cement truck slows down from 55 to 52mph (he can't stop anywhere near as fast as you.) But there is still space between you. Now you slow down to 5mph while he slows down to 47mph, and at this point, all the space between the two of you has been used up and he smashes into you at a relative speed of 42mph. It is as if you were standing still at a stop light and he rammed into you at 42mph. You are dead or very injured, your car is a writeoff, and there is some damage to his front bumper.
Now consider this in China (I actually saw this basic scenario). The same thing happens, but all the cars are tailgating each other. The car in front hits the brakes, the car behind is about 2' behind. It hits the 1st car before anything can be seen THEN applies the brakes. This continues for several vehicles, then the cement truck hits the last car. But everyone hit the car in front at about 1mph relative speed. Everyone comes to a stop. Everyone gets out and yells at each other pointing out how you got mud and a scratch on the bumper from the 1mph accidents. Everyone - because they are all still alive and uninjured - gets back in their cars without pulling out license and insurance - and they angrily drive away because they have one more scratch on their bumper.
Conclusion: The law against tailgating is to prevent minor PROPERTY damage, to prevent bumpers from getting scratched. With the expected result that DEATH and serious injury will occur more often, but at least our bumpers don't get scratched.
In Mexico and China I have seen the light change and EVERYONE waiting IMMEDIATELY starts driving (tailgating.) Yes there are more frequent accidents caused by this, but on they are minor property damage. Now, admittedly there ARE bad driving behaviors that do cause injury and death, not ALL our laws are bad, but tailgating is not one of them.
So the next time you see a vehicle in your rear view mirror and you can see the scratches on the front grill, be thankful that the driver behind is more concerned about saving your life than they are worried about scratching your bumper. And remember - tailgating REDUCES serious injury at the cost of INCREASING minor property damage.
Side note: I think it was in the 1990's there was an idea floated in Canada/USA about vehicles with 'soft' bumpers all around. I think it was a Japanese invention. The suggestion was that with these, we would ENCOURAGE tailgating to minimize human injury and death toll. It was shut down voraciously by the press as a terrible idea. As far as I can see, the motive of the press was: Death and serious injury sells news - vehicular death and injury is the most common in our two countries, so if you drastically reduce the number of deaths and serious injury in vehicles - the press will lose money. So they shot down this suggestion as 'stupid' and 'dangerous'.