
Why Cranes Keep Falling - mhb
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a19612/why-cranes-fall/
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patio11
This is one of those "Wow that certainly feels like an _exotic_ way to die;
clearly, cranes must be more dangerous than cars in St. Louis." sort of
situations.

Spoiler alert: they're not. Cranes are industrial equipment. They're getting
progressively safer over time, due primarily to the general progress of
technology and decreasing reliance on the most error prone component in the
crane.

The most common crane-related fatality is not "crane falls over, killing
operator and/or people on the ground." It is electrocution when the crane hits
a power line. (c.f. OSHA or the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) This is almost
invariably a consequence of human error and failure to follow well-understood
safety procedures rather than "oh noes the software is so complicated these
days."

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cr1895
Another recent tragic crane-related fatality:
[http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/02/23/at-least-two-killed-
after-p...](http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/02/23/at-least-two-killed-after-
passenger-train-smashes-crane-train-overturned/)

Crane operater tries to drive a crane across a railroad crossing,
underestimates the time it takes, passenger train slams into it killing the
train driver and injuring a number of others.

(link text says two killed but it's wrong)

~~~
Symbiote
I assume the same rules exist as in the UK, where slow vehicles must telephone
the railway signaller before using a crossing.

So this is just another version of not following the rules.

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FussyZeus
Considering the work they do in the places they operate, I'm kind of amazed
they manage to kill only 90 people a year. While it certainly is a tragedy,
the politicians kind of make it sound like the companies are being purely and
unnecessarily penny-pinchy to not have the cranes taken down when things get
rough, yet in the same article the author points out that is sometimes a multi
day/week process. That doesn't affect just the construction company, it's also
a ton of lost productivity for the workers involved, and disassembling the
crane during said conditions could be dangerous itself.

I was a kid growing up in Wisconsin when Big Blue fell, I remember the news
coverage vividly and we took a drive down to Milwaukee that weekend to see it.
Crazy stuff to think a machine that huge could fail (as a kid anyway).

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jakub_g
> Statistics from the United States Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor
> Statistics shows that the United States suffers nearly 90 crane-related
> deaths per year

In Europe I almost never hear about crane accidents, either they do not happen
as often or are underreported. Anyway, seems me being uncomfortable walking
past them is not too much paranoic.

~~~
blackstrype
I don't think I've ever seen mobile/crawler cranes here in Paris. All of them
seem to be tower cranes and the structures seem quite stable (I couldn't find
death by crane stats with a quick google). These tower cranes I see everywhere
are on fixed construction sites... I suppose the use of mobile cranes is more
for renovations -- and yes they seem very dangerous in comparison to a fixed-
base crane. But still, when one is going to the effort of building/renovating
something of such magnitude, why can't a fixed-base crane be used ? If done
right it shouldn't be too hard to mount and dismount a modular tower crane --
maybe there's a market for this sort of thing...

~~~
lhopki01
Yeah I very rarely see crawler cranes here in London. The only times I see
them are to disassemble tower cranes. I wonder if this has to do with the size
of streets in New York vs London. In New York most streets are wide enough to
accommodate a crawler crane while in London big crawler cranes have to be
disassembled and brought to the building site in pieces and can't site in the
street beside usually.

~~~
robk
They're not at all uncommon around Victoria. Lots of construction around here.

~~~
lhopki01
Large crawler cranes? There are small ones around London, about the same size
as truck cranes but very rarely do I see one the size of these ones on New
York.

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davidw
Perhaps it has something to do with those gravitational waves we've been
hearing about.

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murbard2
"Operator error lies at the root of most crane collapses."

" Crane manufacturers are now trying to build in new automatic features to
keep disaster from striking their eqiupment. "

Maybe skip through the features and make it fully automated.

~~~
unethical_ban
Create an AI to operate cranes in all kinds of climates, geography and weather
conditions, operating near city centers.

I'll have it by Friday.

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krylon
> Such events highlight the awesome and scary power of cranes

On the one hand, I like that expression, on the other hand it sounds a
little... dramatic.

