Severely injured worker sues Tesla
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"He lost his arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had a wife and three children."
"And what did the company do for him?" I asked.
"Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company employs very efficient lawyers, you know."
That requires significant amounts of energy.
> Tesla should have cut electricity to the equipment he was working on, but refused to because the company didn’t want to temporarily stop production.
Umm, WTF? That's insane at mains-level voltages. Sending someone into a live high voltage system is the kind of behavior that might justify charges for gross negligence or even attempted-murder. There is no way they didn't know this would be incredibly dangerous.
> install dozens of “supercharger” stations where electric vehicles can fuel up
That suggests a lot of power in a device designed to move that power quickly at high current. That's the kind of hazard that should require specific training and special handling procedures.
> Cal/OSHA also cited Mark III for not providing “a suitable barrier to prevent accidental contact with energized parts.”
Given the damage, this sounds like a "barrier to prevent accidental contact" wouldn't have offered much protection. This sounds more like a "only touch it with a long non-conductive poll" level electrical hazard.
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I suggest watching this[1] video that someone posted recently to a different "electrical hazard" story that discusses the dangers if working near high voltages.
Got to get those numbers up.
Tesla in turn tries to pin the blame on the other party by saying they should have followed safety procedures.
That's a tricky statement. The contractor probably should have refused to work in that situation and should have warned the safety officer.
Even so this should have never happened, I hope the guy at least has some documentation to prove that it was Tesla that overruled them.
>Umm, WTF? That's insane at mains-level voltages.
At mains-level (240V and below), working on live systems is fairly commonly done. I've taken 120VAC hits dozens of times and 240VAC a few times. It's not comfortable (and has an outside chance to be fatal, but extremely^2 rarely is) and I try to disconnect power prior to working on something, but sometimes that's not possible (such as troubleshooting power supply components or other PCB work that needs to be done hot).
The most uncomfortable I've been at work was supervising (as a customer) a UPS commissioning and testing when the contracted electricians were making the 480V/3 connections on live circuits to cutover to the new feeds. To us, we didn't need the load carried live; the servers and other equipment was on only to provide a representative load for commissioning testing and phase balancing.
Electricians didn't want to wait for us to shut everything down to take the last step (even though they were no doubt making time-and-a-half on a Saturday afternoon), so they decided to cutover live-live. They acted like they did it all the time. Seemed insane to me, but that's still a modest voltage and from subsequent inquiry, this is apparently very common.
Agreed that actual high-voltage systems are different from mains-level, of course.
Low voltage systems are often much more dangerous for arc flash than high voltage ones: the current is often higher (thousands of amps instead of tens of amps) and the protective devices (circuit breakers or even fuses) are slower. That means the amount of hazardous energy discharged into a worker before the circuit is automatically isolated can easily be enough to maim or kill even at relatively low voltages such as 120V. There's a 208V transfer switch in one substation I work at that has potential arc flash incident energy of 38 cal/cm^2. That's more than enough to kill even from 2 metres away.
At 480 or 690V it is sufficient to simply not touch energized equipment to avoid being shocked, and PPE is available that allows hand-contact (class 0 gloves). However, available arc-flash energy in the event of a fault while the energized equipment is exposed can easily be above the level that any PPE can protect from (usually considered to be 40 cal/cm^2). If the arc flash hazard is at a level that cannot be mitigated with PPE, it will have to be reduced in some fashion either by re-configuring the circuit or de-energizing it before work can be done.
Employers are responsible for performing engineering studies to determine the arc flash hazard level at every relevant location in their facility, labeling it appropriately, training employees on these hazards and providing adequate PPE. Unlike voltage, you can't just look at something and tell how much arc flash potential it has which is why engineering studies need to be done in advance. We have widely-accepted standards such as NFPA 70E and IEEE 1584 that codify the appropriate methods for engineers to use in estimating these hazards, and there's no excuse for failing to do that.
If you don't treat dangerous things with respect, you lose your life.
The energy could have come from the electrical equipment, but if the electrical discharge itself released enough energy to throw him more than 5 feet, I'd not believe anyone telling me that he survived without looking like a tree that got hit by lightning.
Edit: see https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/203999/why-do-el...
If I go to a restaurant that offers 30 minutes or free service, you cannot possibly drag me into it if the cooks cut safety corners because the restaurant is docking their pay for late service while overcrowding the tables.
The sucky bit is being the employee of the scummy sub-contractor who promises more than they can deliver, and expects their staff to do bullshit like this to make it up.
I worry more about this in the "gig economy" than the impact of AI/Robots on the work force.
Another question is what business the “restaurant” that can't even hire the cooks is in.
IMO subcontracting itself is a problem as well, especially if it's a long-term contract. There's nothing wrong with a company hiring its own (for example) cleaning staff.
You don't get to subcontract out your moral/social responsibility, even if you're Apple or Tesla, Nike or Adidas or whatever.
I supervise the operations of a power generating station. From time to time, I have specialized contractors working in my substation. You can bet your bottom dollar that they work under safety practices approved and audited by myself/representatives of my employer (the site owner). There would never be - as occurred here - an unqualified worker injured by an arc flash on my site because no contractor worker is starting work until isolation, lockout and grounding has been verified by two qualified people.
When work is occurring on a site that you own and control, you have a responsibility to supervise and audit the safety practices of your contractors. The fact that very basic safety protocols weren't being followed on Tesla's site shows that they weren't doing the due diligence that I expect from professionals in the electrical industry.
The suggestion that the work could not be done without stopping production makes it pretty clear that Tesla was involved in that decision, after all the contractor has absolutely nothing to gain from whether or not production is stopped but Tesla definitely does.
At a minimum Tesla's oversight totally failed.
Yes, and that reason is to evade liability and bad PR by providing a disposable company to point fingers at. This is not a good thing.
Also note that Foxconn owns the factories, while in this case Tesla owns the unsafe factory.
I’d like to understand the policy and procedures and equipment that was available first. A lot of electrical engineers refuse to use the PPE aware of the risks because it’s uncomfortable and takes time to put on.
Here’s typical PPE for that event to give you an idea the dangers involved: https://www.utilityproducts.com/articles/2012/01/arc-flash-p...
From his injuries it was clear he was not using it. Possibly just a flash visor looking at the lack of direct facial injuries and that was it.
I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to see how this is tesla’s fault.
If I hire an electrician to do wiring at home, and they send along some guy who isn’t trained, and he then electrifies himself through negligence - should I be sued by him? What could I have done differently?
I’m perpetually surprised at how crap even supposedly trained electricians are. At best they don’t understand the consequences of not doing something properly. Even domestic electricians I’ve hired, because I’m not allowed to certify the work myself here in the UK, I’ve had to correct their work when they have gone.
Re: correcting their work, ditto. Was fuming a month ago when I discovered two rings connected to the same socket - and managed to fit the two way dimmer (single common on a dual gang) he’d said was impossible. Think he only knew of one by-rote way to do a two-way, and didn’t actually understand what he was doing. Hell, he thought the US uses DC power - I explained that it was just a different voltage, and AC, and the look on his face said “voltage?”, so I left it at that.
He didn’t even notice I’d rewired when he came back to sign off “his” work.
OTOH there are incompetents in all fields - just that electricity is a pretty bad thing to be incompetent at if it’s your job - I learned a healthy respect for the tingly stuff the hard way.
Oh, and I was recently in Uruguay, where nobody seems to understand what the funny green and yellow wire is for, and hook it up to live. Metal skinned laptop. Funky chicken.
The difference is licensed electrician is trained and qualified to wire a home safely. That's a requirement because home owners are typically dingbats.
Tesla is a manufacturing corporation. The responsibility flows the other way.
Of course, from a _moral_ perspective "they're a contractor" isn't a 100% bulletproof defence, given how fast and loose some companies will play with the definition of employee vs contractor.
Friend of mine works at a place where a few years ago an electrician was burned when a 440 panel blew up on him and they were shut down for 6 months while the house engineers, maintence personal and contractors were 'retrained'
Then again they aren't 'Tesla'
An employer has a moral duty to ensure the wellbeing of their employees and organisation by applying foresight and minimising risks, and covering unavoidable risks with insurance.
In my book, the responsibility sits firmly with the employer - not another business who had a contract with that employer, and a reasonable expectation that that employer would be adequately competent and insured.
If anything, there was a failure on Tesla’s behalf around due diligence.
If the law disagrees with me, so be it - but it seems unreasonable.
On an industrial worksite? Absolutely, the owner should be responsible for safety. Otherwise it's too easy for big companies to throw up their hands and say "oh, that tower crane that collapsed and killed a bunch of people on our construction project? Sorry, it's owned by a shell company in China. Good luck collecting any damages from us!"
Employers always have "extensive protocols" in place, but managers and workers are often pressured to work in unsafe conditions in order to meet their performance goals.
For example, it's very common for workers to avoid donning PPE or properly setting up safety equipment for "simple" yet risky tasks such as routine cleaning of powerful equipment.
It's one of the "would you jump off a bridge just because everyone else did it?" type things, but complacency and peer pressure are real things.
There is always a battle between productivity and safety.
Seems like a bad contractor ignored safety and now they're blaming Tesla. It will be interesting to see who the court finds responsible here.
I expect the contractor would pretty clearly be on the hook here, though, both to this man and to Tesla. Sending an untrained man with no safety gear into a situation like that is absurd.
I think one of the main reasons Tesla is given a pass is because the strong cult of personality around Elon Musk, a modern day slaver in a nice suit. Sure he can go ahead and save the world by his eco-friendly cars, save the ultra-rich by building a Mars settlement, but at what cost?
Or put another way, let's not lose our humanity while saving humanity.