Exposed gears/chain

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Cory

There is no requirement to comply with OSHA standards as a FRC team.

I'm all for safety but adding guards is often not actually more safe than teaching students real safety (like never working on the robot without it being disabled, or even better, off entirely).

The fact that volunteers will often invent or incorrectly interpret rules requiring changes to the robot (in this case adding guards) is a source of continual frustration. Nowhere in the manual does it say all pinch points must be protected from insertion of a finger. Obviously anything egregiously unsafe should be addressed, but that's not what is generally being discussed here.

People will reply with "But safety!!!", but there is only so much you can do to protect people from themselves and at a certain point the safety theater becomes a burden for everyone.

Agreed. I would much rather have students protected by sound decision making skills than by chain guards you learn you have to add only once you're at the regional. Sheids etc do have their place, but chain guards are only really in a position to be helpful if you're sticking your hand inside an enabled robot. If you're doing that, you're asking to be hurt whether or not there are chain guards.

To draw a parallel to surfing: you can make everyone wear a life jacket before they can even look at water, but at the end of the day it's best to give people a healthy understanding, respect and fear of the ocean.