[Ken Leung]

Back when I was on GRT 192, we had shop training during the fall semester of school year, where the students get trained with the usage of tools, and get familiar with the surrounding inside the machine shop. In that training, there was a list of safety rules for the shop that all students have to follow. Although accidents are unavoidable, it was greatly reduced after we start doing the shop training. This is just one of those things a team learn from the past, and build into their program as they go along.

Although it would be nice to see FIRST do something about this, I fear it is going to be a long time before they can come up with anything effective about safety. Just look at the online lessons they have about building a robot. It took them so many years to finally get them out. The only thing FIRST can do for now is stress safety in the rules, and hope that FIRST teams realizes how important it is.

Most team should and do understand about safety, and do make it part of their training before 6 weeks. You should be able to ask the teams around you get a list of useful safety advice.

Also, if your team is doing some sort of rookie team workshop, then you should include safety as a big part of it. Make sure all the rookie teams coming to your workshop understand how important it is.