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$55M lawsuit says welder who fell to his death in Portland wore safety equipment that failed
(www.oregonlive.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Has a link for the lawsuit, actually just circles back to the article. My obvious question, why so much slack in a fall system? Was it supposed to engage upon rapid movement, or was it set up or labeled wrong? If there's a lawsuit that suggests there was something that was supposed to happen that didn't. Fall equipment should stop you immediately, as more time falling means more kinetic energy and injury.
There’s two different types of fall safety, fall prevention and fall arrest. Fall prevention stops you before you fall; fall arrests stop your fall after it happens. The reason why you have a certain amount of slack is because the slack helps absorb the energy; a solid lanyard that doesn’t deploy would distribute the energy throughout your body instead of through the lanyard, which is more damaging.
The type of damage you’re thinking of would be for a fall against a flat surface, you’d want to hit the ground sooner rather than later. But energy transfer through a lanyard benefits more from having room to deploy, and can help prevent your body from going into shock.
Edit: whoops, said fall arrest twice