Quote:
Originally Posted by Edoc'sil
Lighten up safety addicts, your like the plague. Honestly, the best way to teach someone how to swing a hammer is to let him smack his thumbs a few times... It is unlikely that someone will retain permanent damage from ridding their bot, and they could learn a few valuable lessons on the teachings of Darwin and Newton....
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As someone who has done their fair share of stupid "unsafe" actions statements like this scare me. While I generally agree with the live and let learn approach to teaching safety is the one thing it will never apply to in my book. What you may consider a minor injury (a bruise or a decent cut) some parents may consider negligence. While I hate to be "that guy" I have to point out that if a parent gets lawsuit happy the school could decide to shut us down.
Now, do I think that riding a bot is inherently dangerous? Not if done with caution. For example, this one doesn't seem to be moving in the picture. I assume it moved at some point in time during the demo though. The rider should most definitely be wearing a helmet. His hands seem clear of the chain and it looks like he is resting his weight on the main frame of the robot...
That being said, why was this done? We once thought about doing this during prototyping to weight the robot down but then realized the less stupid way of doing it would be to use lead blocks.