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imo that should be treated as attempted murder with all related criminal consequences
One time we were on this job during a plant shutdown. everyone on our crew attached a lock to the LOTO slot. One guy took off without undoing his lock. Everyone had to wait for this guy to answer his phone, turn around, drive back, get his PPE back on, walk back to the lock box and cut his own lock.
There was nobody inside the facility, every machine was shut down for the day. Still, not a single one of these incredibly impatient and pissed off tradesmen even JOKED about cutting buddy's lock. You just don't do it
Yea if someone fucks with my lock out and managment/the company doesn't take it seriously I'm walking out while I still can
Where I live there's an explicit "right to refuse unsafe work without fear of reprisal" baked into the law. I would invoke this immediately
Isn't this what happened to that kid who got killed in a literal meatgrinder in a plant? Jesus.
I know of one guy who cut a lock-out lock at an old job. It was done after hours when nobody else was around and he had "confirmed" that nobody was near the device in question. He was immediately fired because you DO NOT FUCKING CUT A LOCK OUT LOCK.
Commits seriously reckless safety violation that puts workers' lives in danger without telling anyone
Management: Just don't do it again. See you tomorrow at 9.
They say in the Twitter thread that they think the person isn't getting punished because they're so understaffed. That they'd rather just be careless with the lives of the workers, instead of dare hire and train more people. Which sounds very plausible unfortunately.
Sounds about right for the US. It'd cost a company millions to hire more people, it'll cost them maybe 0.00001% of their profits for a wrongful death.
in communist china they don't care about worker's safety
What's LOTO in this context?
I only know it as the abbreviation for "Leader of the Opposition" which obviously doesn't make sense here.
You’re about to crawl inside a big dangerous machine to fix it, so you put a lock and tag on the power switch so that nobody can turn it on while you’re in there.
oh shit
A big zoo near me has a raceway between different animal enclosures. Most of the animals are monkeys and they're not that dangerous but for the dangerous animal they have a specific LOTO system that says "JAGUAR HAS ACCESS."
For anyone who might have a hard time conceptualizing its use in an industrial setting, this is basically a one-for-one comparison.
"jaguar has access" sounds so ominous (rightfully so)
It's literally a lock on a switch to physically prevent it from being opened, because the equipment it's connected to is being worked on and energizing is dangerous
This is one of the most maliciously stupid things I've ever seen and that's saying something
Lock Out Tag Out. It's an OSHA safety procedure
Lock out/tag out
For when machinery is not to be turned on/energized because it's being maintained or is malfunctioning.
The stories my dad used to tell me about factory machinery used to keep me up at night
Horrifying stuff
And most of those stories started with people not using/fucking with the lock-out shit
There's a particularly horrifying story from a local dairy farm where a worker
Guy was like 30 with a small kids and his own farm, but had to work at this shitty dairy to supplement his income. Big farm in the area bought out his whole place within a few months of him passing.spoiler
climbed into some kind of mixer to unclog it, didn't lock it out, and for some reason it was controllable via WiFi and the boss decided the mixer should be running.
WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO WIRELESSLY CONTROL HEAVY MACHINERY WHAT THE FUCK
It's incredibly common in industrial automation to control things over networking. Usually it's an Ethernet connection to a computer or laptop interfacing with a PLC that's running code, but same idea. I've built and installed control rooms in steel mills, they're mostly computers running Siemens or Allen Bradley (Rockwell) software, monitors hooked up to cameras around the mill, and operator stations with push buttons, joysticks, lights, e-stops, etc. And plenty of HMI's (big touch screens). Think Homer Simpson's job
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Wild, that kinda thing is honestly grounds for firing
Out of a cannon
if you ever wonder for an example between social murder vs. murder look little further than this
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! WHOEVER CUT IT DOESN’T DESERVE TEETH!
So this is like ripping a red tag-out note off on a piece of machinery and operating it anyway? I only have a naval frame of reference.
lol 7 upbears but nobody answered my sincere question ;-;
LOTO is lock out tag out, so it's the same thing lol.
The LO part is because you're supposed to literally lock the machine with a padlock that only you have the key to so no one start it while you're in the danger zone.
Someone cut this guy's $90 American lock off with an angle grinder to run it anyways...
You can also see that there's multiple holes for locks so multiple people can have the machine/area locked out at the same time and you can't start anything until all of them unlock it. So someone was in a hurry and didn't wait for the last guy.
In he navy we just had the red and yellow tags, no padlock, and I have never heard of a safety incident involving tagged out equipment. Amazing that the private sector manages to be even more sociopathic than the us navy.
Whoever cut that needs to be beat with a bike chain. That shit is insane
Holy shit
The person that did this will get someone killed eventually.
This is usually an instant termination not because of safety but because doing this shit is a fantastic way to lose your insurance. Also a serious OSHA violation and against labor laws in almost every state. Exposing the company to massive liability is reason enough to fire someone for this.
Am I correctly understanding that these locks are some sort of failsafe on dangerous machinery and that there are procedures and specific reasons for unlocking them properly?
You put them on machinery so no one can accidentally turn it on while someone is working on or even in it.
Last thing you want is someone getting turned to paste because the hydraulic press they were in the middle of servicing got turned on.
Yeah, that's not good.
A lot of padlocks like this don't even need to be cut. Pretty much any of them with a spring loaded catch can be opened by hitting it. Don't even have to hit the cheaper ones that hard.
if its locked and tagged out you dont fucking touch it regardless of how easy it would be to remove the lock. No one removes it except the person who put it there for life and death safety.
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I think American lock is one of the better regarded brands
Yeah, they're pretty resistant to most basic attacks. You need to pick or cut them usually
When did this turn into r/electricians?
Where is the OHS rep wtf
I have no idea what's going on here. What's a LOTO?
Lockout/tagout.
When you're operating on anything dangerous you lock out the machine so nobody turns it on while you're in a dangerous area.
Best example i can think of is like if you had to fix a jam in a wood chipper and actually put your hands inside of it, you would turn it off and put a lock on it, so only you can turn it back on when you get back.
In the above post someone just cut the lock to presumably turn the machine back on while the OP was in a dangerous area for it to turn on.
Edit: reading the thread looks like the machine was broken and they locked it out to keep it turned off until maintenance could be done on it
Fuck, that's dangerous.
And I know one of those stories. Poor fella almost lost his arm. Gruesome.
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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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