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

2 points

🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

The robot “pushed its claws” into the man’s body and drew blood from his back and arm, two witnesses told US technology website The Information.

After another worker hit the emergency stop button, the engineer managed to escape the robot’s grasp and fell down a chute designed to collect scrap metal, “leaving a trail of blood behind him”, one of the witnesses said.

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

Read more from Sky News:Apple fears ‘irreparable harm’ after watch sale ban’Pints’ of wine to be sold in Britain for the first time

The Texas site has been Tesla’s global headquarters since 2021, when chief executive Elon Musk announced he was shifting the company’s home from California.

Musk’s SpaceX rocket company also has a launch site at the state’s southern tip, and he moved to Texas in 2020.


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0 points
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55 points

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.

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26 points

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.

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8 points

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

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19 points

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.

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3 points
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15 points

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…

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7 points

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

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4 points

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.

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17 points

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

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10 points

SORRY, I THOUGHT YOU WERE ELON MUSK. END STATEMENT.

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8 points

This is what happens when you promote a robot to manager.

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