Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Warning Signs


CAUTION - VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.  IMAGES BELOW DEPICT STICKMAN CARNAGE.  YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

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I hate gore.  I have nightmares when I see a gory movie, and as a consequence I almost never see anything even mildly messy.  However, I'm morbidly fascinated by industrial warning signs. What am I talking about?  See below.


This is a warning label for a power takeoff shaft (PTO) on a tractor.  You get the idea, this thing spins really fast and with a ton of torque and if you get to close it will turn you into a loaf of human challah.

I can't stop looking at these things when I operate heavy equipment, which I guess is the point. It's hard to be complacent about safety when you can't take your eyes off the cartoonish stickman being snuffed out on the warning label.  

Here are just a few that have given me the creeps like the PTO image above.

Snowblower:


And a whole scary series of pinch points:



And their close relatives, crush points:


And here's one I saw just the other day, bike endo man:


(I think this is basically an admission by the city that their streets suck, it should say something like "Warning, we can't be bothered to maintain this road, bike at your own risk")

But there's one thing that freaks me out when I'm around it that has a shockingly benign warning label, compressed air.  Here's the normal label:



Seriously!  That doesn't look dangerous at all!  Kind of looks like a rolling pin.  Where is the stick guy getting blown up?

I propose a new compressed gas warning sign.  We've all seen Jaws. After almost 2 hrs of eating everything in sight, they finally get the shark to bite down on a compressed air tank and Roy Scheider shoots it, causing ka-boom.  




There you go.  A simple three panel warning sign about the dangers of compressed air. Definitely don't put it in your mouth, especially if Scheider is gunning for you, or else, ka-boom.