What is safer? Lifts or climbing?

[Keeth]

Regardless of whether or not you're operating an aerial lift or climbing, I think properly trained people are safer.

Sure there are those special cases when one approach is obviously more preferable than the other, but on average, I don't think the comparison is fair.

Climbers, especially productive climbers, have learned or been trained for years on what or what not to do in a tree. On the other hand you can "train" someone to use a bucket in a relatively short amount of time. If the statistics included whether or not the operator actually knew the basics of tree work aloft I think the conversation would change. I believe the results would reveal that the method of ascent into the tree is not nearly as big of a factor as experience in cutting and rigging aloft when it comes to measuring safety.

 

[frashdog]

We just talked about the same things and our Canadian Ministry of Labour can't talk about anything until they put out there full report, 1 year minus 1 day, from the accident. Then you have to go digging to find it.
My goal is to get regular monthly submission for our local members and send it out even close calls.
It should make this information easier to find, local and current.
We had a lot of people saying that they really want this kind of thing from isa or the ministry of labour but those 2 parties said there is privacy laws, etc that prevent them from doing anything like that and it has to be industry based and driven.
The ministry and every safety organization that we talk to have been jumping up and down yelling document, document, document! They find that hydro and utility workers do fairly good at this and the big companies with SOPs do ok but a lot of the small companies in the private residential/ commercial sector is where the ball gets dropped the most.
I've been networking with people in my chapter big and small companies and I'm trying to take what the big companies have and see if even just in our chapter we can have an easy to follow standard reporting system for accidents, close calls, etc. So opening the dialogue throughout our chapter and trying to get h&s reps to step up to get better programs running is what we as a group are saying we want.
So I'm hoping that by getting the ball rolling good things will come of it. Everyone looks at the new toys, crazy rigging, srt, etc. but h&s can be a parallel program to the productivity mind set but we want those to be intermingled better.

But I think I've ate up enough of this thread I should start a new one if people are willing to share there policies to get ideas in place for new owners, workers, etc. I should also say that the awakening thread on here is a great tool for this as well but it often only covers, parts 1 and sometimes part 2 but rarely part 3. But that's for my next thread.

Would making a near miss/awakening incident board anonymous easier?
I'm sure some people would not want their "poor" behavior to be made an example of. Really does not matter who...
"So I know this climber....."

 

[KevinS]

Would making a near miss/awakening incident board anonymous easier?
I'm sure some people would not want their "poor" behavior to be made an example of. Really does not matter who...
"So I know this climber....."

That's a good point and still up in the air. Some people thought it would get more submittions if all the stories were told with how they fixed it and didn't get caught up with the name game. But if people are OK with there names out there that's great.
What happened is more important than who did it, I think

 

[treehumper]

What happened is more important than who did it, I think

It is to us but, there's a reason that ISA, TCIA, OSHA, and the government cite privacy law as the reason we don't hear more about accidents than whats published in the public realm. The fear of litigation. We need to find a way to scrub information to remove personal and company references when producing the information for the purpose of training and policy development. We need to form working groups with the various players, associations, employers, employees, insurers and government regulators to find a solution to the current barriers to sharing of data.

 

[Daniel]

Look at rate of falls from line vs rate of falls from bucket failure or getting cast out of bucket. Are they the same... sounds like the aren't, with falls from lines being higher...
Look at that ratio compared to the ratio of work that each do... NOT MAN HOURS... as its not the hours that need to get done, its the job... and then factor in that not all jobs are the same... could buckets be used proportionally more for the more difficult and dangerous jobs?

Then look at the skill and experience of climbers vs bucket ops...

If you look at all the jobs I've done with a bucket since I got the 75' elevator, you'd have a hard time making an argument that climbing those trees would have been safer... I've done some seriously nasty trees and storm work, seriously compromised trees etc, with a lot of pruning on the branch tips of big trees, that would have taken 5x as long for even the best climbers in the world... Part of that is that this bucket is big enough to handle most of my jobs. When I was using a 55' er, it was a lot more dangerous, either getting out, reaching, or pushing the limits for rigging etc..

So the answer is (LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS BIZ) ......... It all depends...