You do realise that we need to hear more about that story, right?
I joke about it now but in all seriousness bad producers are always trying to cut corners and this sometimes comes at the price of human lives, and even when people go to jail over it the costs are distributed inequitably - see this example of a director getting a 2 year sentence for causing the death of a crew member in an entirely predictable way: https://petapixel.com/2015/03/10/director-gets-two-years-in-...
At the low-budget end you have to be willing to threaten to quit on the spot no matter where you are, because you will be asked to put your safety at risk. I've never worked on a project where anyone died, but I've come close a few times. That's one reason I have such strong opinions about labor codes and safety regulations - I'm used to working outside them :-/
We did have one guy get a minor electric shock because the producer had him changing a light. He was on top of a five foot ladder but with no spotter ("Health and safety BS!") and the producer never bothered to tell him that it was still carrying current, even when the fader was right down. That's not the only time someone's fallen off a ladder, or had a shock. Not once was it reported to the health and safety people, either.
There were also cable loops standing up from the ground (we used short pieces of carpet offcuts to hold them down, never worked and people would trip up. The business manager would never authorize the cash to have flush-mount patch panels installed in the floor (a legal requirement). Also not reported.
One memory is how we had a strict uniform requirement, which often resulted in inappropriate dress for a location. There were a couple of location shoots in below-freezing conditions - in one place, three staff came down with hypothermia because they were clad in sweatshirts and jeans, another it was just one guy in a shirt and dress pants standing outside for seven hours while ice formed on car windows. That particular day, the lucky staff indoors were exposed to unsafe sound levels, with no protection, for the whole shoot. None of these incidents were reported, nor was it reported that the guy who drove the equipment truck back to the studio had been smoking pot for the whole night, in front of the senior staff at the location. Maybe he shared the joint.
Chuck in some 12+ hour shifts without breaks, people working on scaffolding who had no clue how to operate safely, or the guy who replaced an old monitor only to accidentally drop the failed unit, and ended up hauled in front of the Production Manager to account for his "unsafe" actions.
Equipment was never maintained: if something broke, it was the person using it at the time, not the 20-year-old tripod with broken spreaders and worn out fastenings. (Last time I saw that particular tripod, the spreaders had perished and were being held together by duct tape on three sides, and the tape was four or five years old.)
Oh, the stories I could tell... no, wait, that's actually a good summary right there!
(Note to folks at HN: if behind-the-scenes movies are your thing, check out Living in Oblivion with Steve Buscemi and Catherine Keener. Good stuff.)