Which Arm Do You Value More?
Decisions to make in dangerous situations
I’m originally & forever a manufacturing electrical engineer, even though these days I run Internet & Cloud Operations companies.
Once a Factory Man, always a Factory Man.
I’ve always been a Factory Man, especially at scale and for large machinery, almost my first love.
Electrical, Automation, and Manufacturing Engineering means making decisions about a lot of things on a daily basis.
Such as which arm do you value more ?
Sounds like a dumb question. But it’s deadly serious, so let me explain.
In large-scale factory operations, electrical power is controlled by large power cabinets and switches, about the size of home refrigerators. Each one can control several megawatts of power, so they’re packing a lot of power into a relatively small space.
So what happens when one of these switches fails ? Well, it can go badly, resulting in minor explosions, fire leaping out of the joints, or worse, all of which I’ve witnessed firsthand. I can assure you it’s no fun being trapped in a small room with big switches, small explosions, and fire between you and the door.
When do these switches fail ? Often when you turn them on, sometimes the first time due to defects or bad wiring, or even accumulated water during construction. Or later due to subsequent short-circuits, which are never a good thing with thousands of amps flowing through copper bars the size of your arms.
Most of these switches are turned on/off by hand, with quite a lot of force; enough that you might have to jump up and drag a long handle in a large 3-foot circle to get the switch to open or close.
So what happens to the poor guy standing in front of the switch when this happens? Well, that’s where the arm choices come in . . .
Here’s the choice: Do you pull that giant handle with your left or right hand, since that’s the one in front of the gear if something goes wrong . . .
For me, I’m right-handed so I used my left hand, as I felt my dominant hand was more important. Others might use their stronger hand as they can pull the big switch bar faster and get out of the way more quickly — as you try to pull the thing in a way that you are moving away from the switch as it moves to the ON position.
While I never saw or heard about really bad injuries with these switches, it was always possible and something we thought about when we talked about powering on, especially the first time when it was all untested; anything could happen, none of it good.
And if that wasn’t enough, there was the related question of WHO pulled the switch … the boss as a leader, or does he select the man with a family, the most junior guy, the young single guy with the least to lose, in theory?
Interesting moral choices abound with megawatts of power all around …
