Is this true?

That whole situation is quite remote from guys your age. You fall in what I call 4 catergories; skilled and smart, lucky and smart, unskilled and smart and last accident looking for a place to happen. The skilled and smart will do well. The lucky and smart, we just hope his skills catch up with him before his luck runs out. The unskilled and smart will usually find other duties.

The dangerous one is the accident looking for a place to happen. 50 years ago this guy was no problem as no one would employ him, and he never had the resources to buy his own dangerous toys. With the advent of safety devices on cars, trucks, tractors, etc. society now believe this guy is actually employable, that he can operate most powered equipment and not get hurt, nor hurt anyone. Of course the driving force behind all this is society's desire to have these tasks carried out at minamum wage.

Just give you an example. Mack truck that I drive lost significant power. After much searching we found that an option the truck doesn't even have was working well. The truck is wired for a TORQUE LIMITER, and after 7 years this wiring harness chafed, shorting out and cutting engine torque in half, but in this case it was happening on the highway at highway speeds. One day between Tilbury and Chatham on 401 this started acting up. Truck was empty and could only achive 90KMph. The TORQUE LIMITER is actually only supposed to activate when brakes are on, truck is in reverse and some limit torque in lower gears. This is clearly designed so employers can hire an idiot to drive and not hurt the truck. I'm not quite sure these ideas are smart or efficient.

A local gentleman in his 70's was baling hay. He crawled under the baler to re-string the knotter and a tire blew out crushing his chest and killing him. I don't know of anyone who would put a block or jack stand under a baler before crawling under there. It just shows that sometimes accidents happen and are not caused.

Same deal with operating a tractor. I've been on 'em all my life and usually try to avoid anything potentially dangerous. But, being human, there's probably not many among us who've never done something at some time that's made us cringe, thinking "gee, what if..." I know I have.

Normally we get by with it. Sometimes it ends up being one of those "close call" stories, and sometimes, sadly, it's the final story.

One thing though, is that you can't really compare an accident caused by an operator doing something they shouldn't to one caused by equipment failure. Two different things. Sure, when you're doing something, like Cowman's example of carrying an engine with a chain, you should always keep in mind that the chain COULD fail. I had a neighbor killed that way.

But you can't always go through life avoiding every potential failure. Nobody limits themselves to ten miles an hour on the freeway in order to be safe in case a tire blows. And nobody limits themselves to only raising their loader three feet off the ground in case something on their tractor breaks either.

Might not be the proper place to say it, but I've always been a firm believer in the theory that when your time's up, it's up. Whether you're on an airplane, driving down the road, or lying in bed. You can be the most cautious person in the world but when you're number's called, that's it....