Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting story, but I did wonder how much the transition to mountain top removal of coal and away from deep mines contributed.

As the text makes clear the industry was mostly motivated by the cost of roof falls, not the deaths and injuries they caused.

Random AI quote from Google Search: > Surface mining is more cost-effective than underground mining, and accounts for over 60% of coal production in the US.

View on HN

The industry was motivated by costs, but the government regulation was motivated by deaths and injuries. And the graph in the article certainly rather suggests that when the government regulated that's when the number of deaths fell...

There was a pretty sharp drop before too.

I wonder if that's because as regulation is considered and debated, industry incentives start to align as they attempt to show they're "regulating themselves just fine".

Could be. Could also be partly due to the general decline of the coal industry.

Do you mean contributed in a negative way, because subsurface mining had to compete on cost with strip mines?

From the article it appears to me that the mines still stayed somewhat viable despite the added safety, and were mainly lacking a mechanism (=> the regulator) to have everyone prioritize worker safety sufficiently at first...

The deaths themselves are costly to the org, both because of insurance and because it's terrible for morale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com