Comment by ryan@the.coolest.zone on Tesla worker injured [in 2021] by robot that 'pinned' him to wall with its claws at car company's Texas factory

given the scrutiny around Tesla, it’s interesting this story doesn’t seem to have come out sooner since this is a fairly novel workplace accident

Important context autotldr missed:

The incident happened when the engineer was programming the software that controls the robots, which cut car parts from aluminium, The Information reported.

Two of the robots were disabled, but a third was inadvertently left on. As it went through its normal motions, it caught the worker in its claws.

Yikes, that should be checked multiple times before someone gets close to the clawed aluminum cutting robot. Failure of process, I suspect.

Lock out procedure wasn’t followed properly. You’re supposed to check that equipment is in a safe state before you go into a dangerous area like that.

Yes but if for example management is pressuring employees to make repairs in X amount of time that causes them to have to rush, its the company’s fault. Similar to Norfolk Southern giving train engineers 45 seconds per train car to do safety inspections.

Yes but sometimes an employer’s idea of efficiency and the real world do not line up. They won’t tell employees to disregard safety protocols or urinate in bottles explicitly. It becomes the only way for the employee to meet their quota and keep their job.

Every worker is and should be pressured and monitored to ensure they’re working efficiently. That doesn’t give them carte blanche to disregard safety protocols.

the latter will necessarily follow from the former in almost every situation, because “inefficient workers” often get fired or are led to believe they will be fired and they have to make up the difference in that perception somewhere. this is still the company’s fault

“over-stressing workers and pressing them to be as efficient as possible, causing them to cut corners with safety” is such a universal point of failure that it’s frequent in every modern industry and a contributing factor in a huge number of workplace incidents and industrial disasters. respectfully, you would have to actively ignore reality to hold the position you currently do, and if you think that’s the worker’s fault and not the company incentivizing them to do unsafe things to keep their jobs, i can really only describe you as a corporate apologist or bootlicker

Almost one in 21 workers at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory was injured on the job in 2022, according to The Information, compared to the industry average of one in 30.

It’s almost like they have some systemic issue with safety and procedures or something…

It could also be that they are better about reporting incidents than other employers. I’m also curious what they mean by “the industry” if they mean automotive manufacturers or manufacturing in general. I work at a plant that makes parts for heavy equipment, which is similar to automotive, but obviously not automotive. We’ve had 2 recordable incidents this year. One of which was due to someone not wearing their issued cut resistant gloves while handling metal scraps and then needing stitches. There wasn’t any reason for them not to wear their gloves except for laziness or complacency.

Over here in Aus we like to have a “as few maiming’s as possible” policy. You say laziness and complacency, I call it a national disregard for worker safety, an underfunded & toothless OSHA and union-busting, all caused by unchecked capitalistic greed.

But let’s get back to this particular incident. For a start, here’s an article from 2021 about a system to allow robotic arms (and others) to sense human presence and not cause injury to them. So what, Mr. Elon “Autopilot” Musk couldn’t have designed a similar system for his factory? Hah, no, he just doesn’t give a fuck. This article goes into it in more depth. The Fremont Tesla factory had an even higher 1 in 12 injury rate last year. Also, yeah nah, they failed to disclose dozens of injuries. And these two rates don’t account for them. Still don’t believe me? Here’s a paper comparing Tesla to the automotive industry average. It cites it’s source as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But you should absolutely congratulate your colleagues. Assuming there’s more than 41 of them, you did better than Tesla! 👏

CW: first four links contain fake gore

Average is one in 30? Wild. The P&G plant near my house was at a few hundred days with no incidents recently. For Tesla to be doing even worse than 1/30 tho? Yikes

Another way to look at it is that the average manufacturing worker has a safety incident every 30 years.

The Tesla factory in Germany has roughly 3 times as many reportable incidents as comparable factories.

Occupational hazard. Doesn’t mean said engineer isn’t owed compensation though. On the contrary.

Considering the subject matter, perhaps the auto-TLDR bot has a conflict of interest!

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Tesla worker injured [in 2021] by robot that 'pinned' him to wall with its claws at car company's Texas factory(news.sky.com)

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