Featured Tesla workers report explosions, concussions, and grisly robot injuries at Texas factory

Any Automobile Manufacturing facility is by its nature is potentially a very dangerous place.

It would be hard to detail here to someone who has never been in one the tremendous automation, robots, conveyors, presses, lifts and many other machinery that is present.

Stringent safety procedures are a necessary requirement and even with these the potential for serious injury exist.

This is not even mentioning repetitive motion injury and forklift/transport injuries with required production transportation of parts and goods.

We had a very safe automobile manufacturing facility but even then visitors/vendor and unauthorized personnel were prohibited in certain areas because of the potential dangers present.

Before I would make a jump to judgement from an article, I would want to evaluate safety procedures and have an OSHA report detailing accident rate by hours worked compared with other similar facilities.

Incidentally, OSHA investigations are automatically triggered by accident rates and certain types of serious accidents. If a Plant/Facility has an accident problem and is properly reporting them, you can rest assured OSHA is going to be investigating.

 

Yes, just Google "robot kills worker" and see how often this happens... The most recent one I read was a worker in charge of setting up a robot was running some tests and got killed because the robot he was working on thought he was a box that needed to be put elsewhere. What a way to go...

And perhaps even more dangerous in the furture is AI... Of course given all the smug overly-confident tech folks at OpenAI who went through a huge nightmare with their board of directors in recent days I wonder why they don't just use AI for their board of directors instead?

 

"Right to work" often means right to be screwed by the employer.

 

And often means sometimes. .... (sigh) Moving on ...
funny how robot injuries with GM, Chrysler, porsche/audi/vw/, Toyota,mitsu, ford ad nauseum get left out of the mix . Wah wah waahhh !! - i attached bumpers & I'm not treated fairly. So go start your own business & show how you can do business better.
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Safety is no accident. It needs to be continuously pursued.

Regulations and safety rules are often paid in blood and deaths. It happens in every human endeavor.

Industry settles lawsuits and negotiates settlements with no fault non disclosure agreements.

The NTSB and the NHSA discloses everything and improves safety for everyone.

Prior to rules and regulations, all civil projects had a certain number of deaths as a given.

How many here have wondered about the true data and facts relating to Toyota Prius brake booster faults?

Wouldn't it be better for all owners , if we had access to all of Toyota's trade secret data on the brake booster issue?

 

"Safety is no accident" right out of the typical multinational corporate HR blurbs. After all if you are not pedantically saying it - then it must not be true in your businesse's world. Sounds great - right? Yet it doesn't in the least mean that corners don't get cut - coming from nearly 4 decades working in corporate manufacturing / entertainment production - & personally experiencing the "we really really care now" nonsense.
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Unfortunately, it's always about the money.

The golden rules: Those who have the gold make the rules. And, those who have the gold buys out those who make the rules.

 

clickbait, nothing to see here. if there's an issue, osha will sort it out. statements from employees and employers are pointless, and we don't need the verge to tell us, unless they are shorting tesla stock

 

I'd be willing to trade them immunity from prosecution / civil liability if they gave everyone their source code. So many entrepreneurs would be building the coolest Toyota vehicle mods if they were forces to do that. I'd be driving my Prius for another 50 years as a EV if we had source code to read/write the code to ease the transition!

 

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Maybe because Tesla's injury rate is 31% higher than the national average. That likely makes them the worse.
Injury rates at Tesla’s auto factory were 31 percent higher than the industry average, report finds - The Verge

They also have been under reporting injuries.
Tesla’s on-site health clinic accused of undercounting worker injuries - The Verge

And may not even be reporting them to required authorities.
When workers die in Texas, authorities aren’t always alerted | Texas Standard
"...one of the requirements was that Tesla would report any injuries or deaths that occurred during construction of the site. In the report for that year, Antelmo Ramirez, who died, is absent from the Tesla report, as are other injuries..."

 

That report is from 2017, looking at 2016. We have california, relatively new employees, still figuring out how to make the model X. I would not expect those figures to be the same in 2022 if they looked. Comparitively in 2018 injury rate if you add in the osha ones now said to be undercounted were 6.5% vs 6.3% in the industry according to BLS. There are factors that make this statistically insignificant difference. I think today it is around half that, and fewer workers are needed to produce each car so injury rate per vehicle is much lower than the industry.

Under reporting is bad, as you can't fix a problem if you don't understand it. Work place injuries are still far to high in the auto industry. Deaths and disabling injuries especially should be counted a different way with investigations to make sure whatever practices were employed are changed to prevent these injuries.

 

Thanks for the 'heads up.' You've reminded me I need to take my +4 year old, 119,000 mile, Model 3 to wash the employee blood and guts off.

Bob Wilson

 

Probably few incidents/accidents comparing to the Tesla autopilot ones?

 

Probably few incidents/accidents comparing to the Tesla autopilot ones?

 

less self inflicted?

 

Everything is still pretty awful in that regard these days... But we've also come a long way since the time that industrial workers were considered disposable and if you lose life or limb at work they'd just throw you away rather than be legally required to make sure you/family have a safety net. Of course those with all the gold who make the rules have trained too many to think its unfair that wealthy investors have such onerous and unjust burdens. that they claim is oppressive communism rather than basic decency & fairness.

 

I don't remember telling anyone about hitting my head on the bottom of my Tesla Model 3 while it was on the lift. So that head scrape wasn't just Tesla worker blood and guts?

Bob Wilson