The Illusion of Safety: Safe vs. Safer vs. Safer-er

TreeMuggs

Treehouser
Joined
Dec 24, 2016
Messages
198
Location
Southwestern Ontario, Canada
Good day friends, today I want to talk to you about climbing and production tree work. Sound good? Ok, let's begin.

Today you are going to learn the master key, the grand secret of tree work. This will probably change your life. Pay attention now, we're going to move fast. Here it is -

Safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety.

Safety! Safety.

Safety, safety, safety. (Safety, safety).

safety.............

"Safety?" Safety!

And just so we're clear... SAFETY!

I hope you learned as much from that as I did. This concludes the lesson, carry on with your day.

Climb safe, Work safe, Read safe.
- TreeMuggs

Meow let's all get out there and just be safe. OK?

(sarcasm implied...)


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Wait. Let's start over. First of all, some definitions:


Safe

/sāf/

adjective

1. protected from or not exposed to danger or risk;
2. in other words, a utopian condition continually strived for, but impossible to attain, due to the nature of... reality.


Safer, Safer-er, Safest, etc.

/sāfər/

adjective

1. illusory and subjective concept with no endpoint; these terms are therefore to be defined as: undefined.


Safety Police

/'sāftē pəˈlēs/

noun

1. a small but vocal minority of people in this trade, usually (but not exclusively) encountered online, who feel the need to validate their own superior knowledge by continually pointing out how things could have been done "safer" and "safer-er". Unofficial Motto: "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt".


Context

First of all, I work in the private sector. I run my own tree service. What little money I make from this enterprise helps to put food on the table. In other words, my production at work matters. I have to get stuff done to get paid. I can't take 2 1/2 days to get a tree down. We don't have guys with white hats standing around. I don't work for a city, or a municipality, or "hydro". If you do, mazel tov. I have more friends in the industry who have left the private sector than those who have stuck around. They leave for the better pay, the benefits, the pension, and all the other perks. I get why they leave. I don't hold it against them, and I'm not envious of their position. Why do I stick around in the private sector? I stick around because I value freedom more than security. Being my own boss affords me a freedom that my friends elsewhere simply don't have. I set my own schedule, I choose my own customers, I make my own way. I say all of that to give you some context for where I'm coming from.

I may take a lot of flack for this article from the Safety Police and others in the "industry", but this is a subject that needs to be addressed. This is something that a whole lot of people think about, but it is politically incorrect to talk about. I care about safety as much as the next guy, but make no mistake, nobody cares more about your own personal safety than you do.

What is Safety?

I care as much about safety as the next guy. I want nothing more for myself or my employees than for all of us to be able to go home at the end of the day intact. But make no mistake, the reason that we all come to work each day is not to "be safe". Sorry if you've been told otherwise. No, the reason that we all come to work each day is to get shit done.

I believe that safety in terms of a production arborist has a lot more to do with how you interact with others, rather than how you interact with yourself. Once you know the rules of the game, only you can define what is "safe" for yourself. If I'm on a ground crew and I get hit without warning by a big chunk of tree, what does it matter that the climber who sent it down was using 2 lanyards, both with a 540 wrap, and 2 climbing lines "for redundancy"?

There is a strong correlation between a climber who exhibits good personal safety and also works hard in a team setting to watch out for other's safety. But correlation does not imply causation. Again, nobody cares more about your own personal safety than you do.

Safe Enough

I want to introduce a concept that seems to have been lost on most institutional teachers and trainers, as well as the infamous "safety police" that lurks online. That is the concept of "safe enough". We must make allowance for "safe enough" because things could ALWAYS be "safer" and "safer-er".

If you are a trained and competent climber and you want to spur up a tree with just a lanyard and no climbing rope belay, then go ahead. I'm not going to put my Safety Police hat on and lecture you on how you could be "safer" or "safer-er". The important thing here is to be "trained and competent", and this means knowing the what-ifs, knowing what you are trying to avoid. You need to understand the rules and why they are there, before you can break them. As long as you know what a kickout is and how to avoid it by keeping your weight on the spurs and lanyard, then spurring with just a lanyard is "safe". Old-timers used to actually refer to their lanyard as their "safety" - i.e. the lanyard is what makes spurring safe. Would you be "safer" with a secondary, backup lanyard? Probably. Would you be "safer-er" by setting a climbing rope from the ground and belaying as you ascend? Yes, you would be. But just because you choose not to, that does not make spurring with just a lanyard "unsafe". Do you see the difference? The Safety Police would have you believe that if something is even a bit less than "safer-er" then it must be "unsafe". This is a false dichotomy, because climbing trees is inherently unsafe.

At some point, there must exist a "safe enough". We must make allowance for "safe enough" because at the end of the day, we do actually need to get up there and get the work done. If the one and only situation in which we can say that we are really, truly safe is when we stay at home and lie in bed, then we have a serious problem. Not only that, but couldn't I argue that if you are "safe" at home in bed, you would be "safer" at home in bed with a helmet on? Wouldn't you be "safer-er" if you moved your bed down into the basement in case of tornado? What about hurricanes and floods? Raging wild fires? Bed bugs?


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Safety is an illusion. You can NEVER be perfectly, well and truly safe. We are climbing living organisms, natural systems that could fail at any time, while swinging around on little nylon ropes with running chainsaws for God's sakes! This is not a safe thing to do!


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Concept: Minimum Effective Dose (M.E.D.)

The Safety Police are always obsessed with "safer", but what does that even mean? This is a game that has no endpoint. Water boils at 100?C (212?F) - that is the minimum effective dose for boiling water. At any given time, water is either boiled, or it isn't. Bringing water up to 150?C does not make it "more boiled". (Borrowed from "The 4-Hour Body" by Tim Ferriss.)

When you work on a crew, safety is everybody's job. You need to work as a team: everybody looks out for everybody else. Does that make it a "safe" situation? No. Tree work is dangerous. Driving to work every morning is dangerous. But we still have to get to work. So, we apply the minimum effective dose of safety to our driving.

- seatbelts, brakes, airbags, not texting, paying attention, etc.
- would we be "safer" wearing helmets and full body harnesses like in Nascar? Yes, we would. Would we be "safer-er" if we never drove faster than 30 mph? Yes, we would. Could I keep going with this analogy? Yes, I could go on for quite some time. My point is, we have agreed on a certain base level of safety precautions, and at some point, we just have to put our faith in Providence, hop in the car, and get to work.


Conclusion

Please don't take any of this the wrong way. I am certainly not condoning any behaviors that we can all agree are unsafe. I simply need you to understand that tree work is not about safety. It's about work. Of course we strive for safety in the execution of our work, but the reason that we come to work is not to "be safe". Learn the rules of the game. Learn how to get the work done in the best and safest way possible. Just don't be delusional about why we do what we do. Going back to our driving analogy, we could argue on the interwebs about what is "safer-er" all day long, but arguing does not get us from point A to point B... driving does.



Climb high, Work smart, Read more. Oh, also, be safe (seriously).

- TreeMuggs
 
Holy cow I'm impressed! I thought all the normal people here had quit posting and had been replaced by TreeBuzz rejects! Oops, sorry if I said that out loud. For the most part I simply quit posting about my work because I don't want to hear the criticism from the safety police. Hell, what they did to Rico here should be against the law. I miss the old days of this forum when we could talk about real situations without getting scolded. I come here for fun, not to have some kid with a fraction of my experience tell me I'm unsafe.
 
I thought all the normal people here had quit posting and had been replaced by TreeBuzz rejects!

What a shitty thing to say and disrupt this thread.

You need to do something about all that hate inside you before I have to do something.
 
@TreeMuggs; I hope you had your carpel tunnel syndrome wrist protectors on when you typed all that up! Just kidding!

That was a really well written post. I'm going to have to go back now and look at the kind of grief Rico was given; maybe I missed those threads. I hope that stuff isn't the reason he's not still posting here. It seemed like he was really getting on well with the true veterans on this forum.

Brian, I'm really, really sorry to hear that you feel inhibited from posting about your work on this or any other forum as a result of this stuff. I hope it was never I who got on you like this. Being able to read what the most highly skilled veterans do for a living, and how they do it, is the big appeal of the forums.

I surely hope this kind of thing did not happen to you while posting in the Elders forum. Perhaps that part of this forum would be a "safe" place, relatively, to post whatever you feel like posting. If you feel as though I ever get out of line in this regard, please feel free to tell me to shut my yap. Apologies if I ever got out of line with you in the past. Thanks for your thoughts, TreeMuggs and Brian.

Tim
 
He doesn't wear a hardhat most of the time. A few members told him it would be better if he did. But no one really beat'm like a dog over it. he's a grown man and can do what he chooses to do.
 
Agreed.

Brian, I think you're maybe a little off the reservation this time. Maybe again, my old and much respected friend :).
 
I really don’t think Patrick posted this in any regard to Rico at all. I think he’s addressing the fact that one person can have the ability to do a job safely with less “safety” than another person. I think we can always be safer at what we do but at some point talent and training has to come into the equation. I can remember when three points of contact was considered safe till you reached a place to lanyard in. Now it’s an overhead tie in plus a lanyard wanted to ascend on spurs. Before long I’ll need to be tied in three times before using a chainsaw with a helicopter as my third tie in with a backup helicopter tethered to the first one in case it runs out of fuel. The only way to be 100% safe in this line of work is to go do something else that isn’t in this line of work.
 
Interesting...
I guess I was 'safer-er' today...cutting out a dead, like two years dead top of a sycamore...

1.Tied into the adjacent elm...base tie SRT...OH NO...not the dreaded base tie!! Yes, because I like base tie and I am cognizant of its limitations and made up my own mind that it is safe enough for me. And my TIP was only about 3"...and one side of the fork was dead at the top...hmmm, got green leaves for most of it, and it went over another branch behind... and I only weigh 116lbs soaking wet...safe enough.
2. second rope lanyard over the 'not quite so dead' part of the sycamore.
3. Wire core lanyard on the dead bit I was felling to keep me in the right position

What you reckon...a combination of 'safer-er' and 'safe enough'...?
 
^ well that's all fine and good but were you wearing chaps, ear plugs, ear muffs, safety glasses, face shield, cut resistant gloves, a second rope set so that somebody can come and rescue you, and was there a person equally outfitted with the ability to come rescue you should an accident occur?
 
I miss the old days of this forum when we could talk about real situations without getting scolded. .

And also those halcyon days when there were no liberals on the forum, apparently.

So, Brian. Care to tell me when these wonderful, rosy tinged " Old days" were?
Since you keep bringing them up, it would be interesting to know when the forum, in your opinion, changed to the lesser format,full of liberal Treebuzz rejects.
 
I hope you guys know I was joking.

IMO it's hard to be "safe" in a dangerous business. We can outfit ourselves in all the PPE to save us from minor damage but in this business there are plenty of things that PPE won't do squat against. Sound judgement is the best way to be "safe".
 
I'm sort of safe, I guess. I always wear a hardhat, gloves, boots, and ear plugs; occasionally wear glasses. On the "unsafe" side, I don't wear chaps, and I often hold my chainsaw with one hand while holding a branch with the other. That's how I've done it for 38 years; it may not be "right" but it's right for me. I also use natural crotch rigging and if I have to climb, which is rarely, I use a taut-line hitch. Yup, I'm old school and proud of it.
 
About 3 years ago I died (and was resuscitated) after contracting an antibiotic-resistant staph infection from being pricked by a rose thorn. I remember laying there in the hospital thinking “THIS is how I die?!? After all the crazy things I’ve done, I get killed by a rose bush?!? WTF?!?!”

It’s true. Safety IS an illusion. As long as you’re alive, there’s no hiding from risk.
 
And also those halcyon days when there were no liberals on the forum, apparently.

So, Brian. Care to tell me when these wonderful, rosy tinged " Old days" were?
Since you keep bringing them up, it would be interesting to know when the forum, in your opinion, changed to the lesser format,full of liberal Treebuzz rejects.

+1
 
oh yeah...forgot about the second pre-set line for someone else to come and get me...my bad.

I reckon here collectively we are 'safe', with a tinge of 'safe enough' and a serving of 'safer-er' :)
 
I'm sort of safe, I guess. I always wear a hardhat, gloves, boots, and ear plugs; occasionally wear glasses. On the "unsafe" side, I don't wear chaps, and I often hold my chainsaw with one hand while holding a branch with the other. That's how I've done it for 38 years; it may not be "right" but it's right for me. I also use natural crotch rigging and if I have to climb, which is rarely, I use a taut-line hitch. Yup, I'm old school and proud of it.

Now if you said you used manilla and taking wraps with natty crotch rigging that might be acceptable.
 
... never gone to double lockers on my Safeties , old school rope snaps for me. Feel safer actually , said this before "Why not Triple locks then ? OSHA may kill me up there"
 
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