> Phil Rushton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Adrian Stott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 4:31 PM > Subject: [canals-list] Re: Risks in the nanny state > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > >A few years ago we successfully argued that it was unnecessary for > > >volunteers > to wear life jackets to install mooring rings in the towpath at Froghall, > working several feet back from the edge of a channel barely 3ft deep, on the > grounds that nobody had ever suggested that any of the dozens of towpath > walkers > needed to take any such precautions. I don't think we'd be as likely to be > successful today. > > > > Better drowned than duffers, eh?
"...If not duffers wont drown." While I have some sympathy with that point of view (having been an Arthur Ransome fan when young), I'm not sure it really applies in this case. We don't have many real duffers in WRG, but even if we did it would represent quite a spectacular feat of dufferishness (dufferdom?) to drown in those particular circumstances. (And yes, I know you can drown in a cup of tea. Presumably that's why all the BW dredger crews have to wear life jackets these days...) > In recent years when BW have been doing winter maintenance at Bosley locks > they have erected safety netting between the towpath edge and empty canal > pounds. What H & S person thought that an empty canal is more dangerous than > a full one? Maybe another example of the problems of the 'one size fits all' approach. If working on a lockside it might be a reasonable argument that a fall into a drained chamber is more dangerous than a fall into a full one. Alternatively simply that draining the canal for maintenance turns it into effectively a building site and means that different regs apply. When we worked on some bywash repairs at Tewitfield Locks a few years ago BW's H&S chap insisted on 8ft high barriers to prevent us falling in the empty derelict lock chambers, even though we weren't working anywhere near them. On the other side of the side of the locks, a 3ft railing was deemed sufficient to protect the public who were walking past them on the towpath... Martin
