It's always a good idea to be trained to identify when an action may be hazardous. Then when you make the decision yourself to do something stupid and it all goes wrong there's perhaps a bit of a get-out for your employer. You have responsibility for yourself and others, you have been trained.
Here are some private contractor chaps removing a safe from a building. A bunch of us were observing the activity from some distance away in our office. The safe had already been dropped down the stairs when they were moving it manually, something that I find hard to believe (that they could move it) having tried moving one of these things myself. The safe then got stuck and then took some considerable time to get free.
After specialist equipment had been brought in, the window removed, and a great deal of chin and head scratching had taken place, the safe was eventually released from its wedged position on the stairs.
Watching this performance filled me with horror. There were times when the chaps, armed with no more safety equipment than a hi-viz vest and a woollen hat, were standing under the safe when it was barely supported. A single strap held under one end by nothing more than goodwill, and the other end balancing on the window ledge, threatened disaster at any moment.
However it all ended well, and these darned fools managed to make it back to their place of work without being squashed to the vertical dimension of a pizza. Well done. What happened to them after that is unknown, presumably they've been avoiding incident by the skin of their teeth ever since. All in a days work for these fellas, health and safety training or not.
Of course even if they had been wearing hard hats and steel toe cap boots and the safe had landed on them they'd still have been rendered pizza-like. So perhaps it isn't such a big deal...
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