Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
I feel like we should start a new thread specifically about FIRST's safety glasses policy.
Arguments that there's a non-zero chance of eye injury are not persuasive. There's a non-zero chance that a rock will shatter your car windshield into a million pieces. To paraphrase JVN, do you drive with your safety glasses on? I should hope not, as the loss of peripheral vision is much more dangerous.
Which is to say, perhaps we should examine whether the costs of wearing safety glasses outweighs the benefits.
I'm wondering if we might get more benefit if we pull the volunteers and team "volunteers" from the safety glasses Maginot Line* and distribute them around the pits to monitor other, more serious safety issues. Issues like teams standing around crowding pits and aisles, teams working on robots outside their pits, minibot towers outside of pits, and various other dangerous doings. I have to think that it's better to reduce the possibility of accidents than to reduce the potential severity of a small class of those accidents.
*We all surely realize that the door guards are useless once someone's behind them without safety glasses, right?
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There's no question that the other safety issues need to be looked at. There were many other violations in the pits that could be avoided. Running in the pits was a particular problem at this event with the distances involved.
I have to ask you if you've ever worked in a manufacturing plant/test lab/machine shop environment. If so, then you were required by your employer to wear eye protection. This is not just for their insurance, employers are required by OSHA regulation to ensure compliance.
I understand that FIRST isn't an employer except for a few people but they are following industry best practices regarding eye protection and it is probably part of their liability insurance as well.
The facts are that safety glasses are a simple method to reduce potential injury. You say that the cost of safety glasses isn't a benefit? What is the cost of an eye?