Highway engineers overcome rock slide safety concern….with unsafe practice!
Rock slides are, of course, a major safety hazard; and highway engineers around the world have devised numerous ways to prevent them.
But few of these methods are as hair-brained and hazardous as those employed by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDT) which has taken it upon itself to suspend a breaker-equipped mini excavator and a seemingly suicidal operator on a wooden platform suspended from a crane.
From this precarious position, the breaker is used to pry loose rock from the rock face above US 64….at least when the mini excavator isn’t swinging or revolving in an uncontrolled manner.
We would like to embed the video here but, apparently, foresight is not a strong point for TDT so you’ll have to click here if you want to watch some of the least safe practice it has been my misfortune to witness.
