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Originally Posted by Ken Loyd
Ask yourself this, do you want to be the mentor who makes the phone call to a parent to explain that their son or daughter has just been injured? What would you say to a ten year old who is on a school tour of the pit area when a piece of non secured aluminum flies off a drill press and punctures his head, accidents happen. Thirty-three years of teaching Industrial Arts with no serious student injuries. Yes, I teach proper tool use and safety. In a few cases it was blind luck that no one was injured. After all, they are called accidents!
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This is actually a common fallacy:
Appeal to emotion. You can make a similar argument about the robots themselves: What if a ramp deploys on someone's head? What if a robot runs in autonomous in the pits, runs someone over, and then drives over their head?
Or about cars: Do you want to be the guy calling someone after their 10-year-old got killed in the street by an improperly operated car? We should ban cars.
A better argument would be to find out how many people are seriously injured at regionals by team-run machine shops every year, and see if it is at all substantial.
Think of the thousands of broken bones that football churns out each year. That isn't to say that injuries are acceptable, it's just that having a zero-tolerance for injuries simply isn't doable. You end up having to restrict the sports so much (touch football) that they aren't the same anymore.
From personal experience (which is a fallacy itself), I've seen more people need serious medical attention at swim meets for heart, lung and shoulder (dislocated shoulder hitting the wall) problems than I've seen ANYONE needing medical attention at FIRST events.
It would be terrible for an injury to happen. But accidents happen. We can't let fear of what might happen or what could happen rule our lives.
Not picking on you specifically, but:
Quote:
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What would you say to a ten year old who is on a school tour of the pit area when a piece of non secured aluminum flies off a drill press and punctures his head, accidents happen
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I'd rather make a rule saying that non-team or non-sponsors aren't allowed in the pit than the extreme safety nannyism this rule represents. Teams have been using these tools for at least 6 weeks before the competition.
My idea:
Just like robots, have inspections of team machines. If they are found to not be in good running condition or are ever seen being run improperly, put a "disapproved" sticker on them in such a way that the machine may not be run at the competition. I.e. for a drill press, put it over the drill hole. For a ban saw, put it over the saw. This would make it easy to detect people working around the system, and would provide an incentive for teams to make sure their machines are run properly.