I made a spreadsheet out of the PDF of injury rates by industry, which is much easier to sort and compare. Google removed the indentation I had added from the original, but it should be clear enough; the number of digits in the NAICS code is the indent level. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LKE00PJDDE_ZnDb1Slpq...
For the record, in 2016, the injury rate per 1000 workers for "automobile manufacturing" as a whole was 6.7; "Animal (except poultry) slaughtering" was 7.2; "Sawmills" 7.3; Tesla's was 8.1, on a level with "psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals", just above "heavy and civil engineering construction", and just below "correctional institutions", to name a few. Tesla claims they're down to 4.6 in 1st quarter 2017, but of course we only have their word for that.
The document further breaks out cases with days away from work, restrictions, or transfers (DART). That's 3.9 for the auto industry in general, 4.9 for non-poultry slaughtering, 3.9 for sawmills, and 7.3 for Tesla (from the WorkSafe report linked in the article).
So it sounds like there may actually be something to this. Weird that they decided to go with clickbait instead of just presenting the data.
"The scores don’t account for severity, however. The injuries at Tesla appear to be related to long hours and ergonomic design."
Not to say that any harm to your health should be avoided, but by auto industry standards (other than Tesla) to this day serious incidents involve losing limbs or death. I know they're pushing everyone at Tesla as the company is still losing a lot amount of money, but it's not clear that anyone being pushed is taking really serious risks -- at other auto companies, they are and the result is literally loss of limb and life. Moreover their loss is for "greedy capitalists" as the workers earn very little, have incentives to take risks, are not trained appropriately, and traditional car companies are quite profitable unlike Tesla.
The photos in the recent Businessweek coverage of auto industry safety of people missing limbs are horrible (Tesla was not mentioned therein btw).
In _Understanding Human Error_, Sidney Dekker points to a study done at the time (many decades ago) that within an industry, the guys with the most frequent small accidents had the least frequent big accidents. Of course at the time, it was not fully known that covering up small incidents would mean you almost inevitably faced a catastrophe.
>at other auto companies, they are and the result is literally loss of limb and life.
Comparing the safety history of a company that has produced fewer than 200,000 vehicles ever to companies that produce many multiples of that, annually, and have been in operation for over a hundred years is ridiculous.
Man, if you can brand yourself a "tech company" the Silicon Valley technorati will apologize for anything.
The title itself uses a basic framing technique intentionally written to fool you into a false conclusion.
1- "worse than slaughterhouses and sawmills" is more catchy than "better than X" (chose any X automaker)
2- Is the safety level of a slaughterhouses or a sawmill comparable to a car's ? They are things not in the same category, with different sophistication level and different purpose, how many times a day an average person will enter a slaughterhouse or a sawmill ?
Title here is misleading. Actual title of article at LA Times is "Tesla had worse safety records than slaughterhouses and sawmills" - note "had", past tense. The records in question are from 2015, and as the article says, they are working on improvements.
And even then, the records are for number of incidents rather than severity. The two specific things they mention are tendinitis and carpal tunnel, which suck, but aren't the sort of injuries one associates with sawmills...
It's analagous to saying "Elon Musk's mouth has worse bacterial contamination than petri dish of Lyme Disease." Sure, by number of bacterial agents, Musk's mouth is more contaminated... But that's not a very useful statement unless you want to mislead people.
Most sawmill injuries involve splinters and worn out work gloves with holes in them.
Machinery doesn't kill people every day at Tesla nor at sawmills but considering the differences between the workplaces it's impressive that the number of little injuries at an auto manufacturer adds up to the number of little injuries in a sawmill.
I don't think you would get much productive discussion for the article, which makes apples to oranges comparisons, misrepresents the report or focuses on irrelevant details. The report itself is fairly clear and easy to read and probably serves as a much better starting point for a discussion. The report is linked in the article - http://worksafe.typepad.com/files/worksafe_tesla5_24.pdf
Is there any chance that we can change the rules to make comments about the title and it's clickbaitiness off limits? This is getting to be the majority of comments.
FWIW, the article is written in a vindictive and personal tone; there's basically no way that's going to generate a balanced discussion about the ethics of workplace risk, or the usefulness of labour statistics.
Interestingly, Tesla's approach is to hire ergonomics experts to help address the repetitive stress injuries (severe tendinitis and carpal tunnel).
Compare that with the slaughterhouse industry:
"In recent years, the industry has bragged about dramatic reductions in worker injuries. What they’ve failed to report is that the OSHA injury form was recently re-written to omit the category of repetitive stress injuries – the most commonly reported injury in the industry."
So, Tesla is being compared on reported injury rates to slaughterhouses, whose standards have been re-written to exclude reporting the most common types of injuries, which just-so-happen to be the types Tesla is reporting?
(Note that the quote above comes from a pro-vegan site, so it isn't unbiased).
Tesla alleges they have the lowest injury rate for 2017. The report analyzed data from 2014 to the end of 2016 and found Tesla's injury rate to be higher than the average. They allege that there is not enough data released for 2017 to substantiate Tesla's claim.
That should be in the title of the article. "Safety incidents at Tesla plant were 31% higher than industry average in 2015".
Without the 31% higher, you'd expect a 50-50 chance of being above or below the average. 31% higher sounds like its might be statistically significant. You'd need other numbers to be sure - e.g. if there are only 1.53 incidents on average, then Tesla might be the unlucky factory that had 2 incidents instead of 1.
Even the new title, "Safety incidents at Tesla plant were higher than industry average in 2015".
Who cares? The very definition of "industry average" means that someone in the industry will be above or below the average. Why would I want to read about that? Why pick on Tesla? because they're popular?
Did they claim otherwise about their 2015 numbers anywhere? The only thing they mention is about Q1 2017. The 2017 numbers seemed to have improved drastically, something the article recognises (but the HN headline does not :S).
> The records show a rate of safety incidents reported at the company’s Fremont, Calif., auto plant significantly higher than the auto industry average — as much as 31% higher in 2015.
Readit News
For the record, in 2016, the injury rate per 1000 workers for "automobile manufacturing" as a whole was 6.7; "Animal (except poultry) slaughtering" was 7.2; "Sawmills" 7.3; Tesla's was 8.1, on a level with "psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals", just above "heavy and civil engineering construction", and just below "correctional institutions", to name a few. Tesla claims they're down to 4.6 in 1st quarter 2017, but of course we only have their word for that.
The document further breaks out cases with days away from work, restrictions, or transfers (DART). That's 3.9 for the auto industry in general, 4.9 for non-poultry slaughtering, 3.9 for sawmills, and 7.3 for Tesla (from the WorkSafe report linked in the article).
So it sounds like there may actually be something to this. Weird that they decided to go with clickbait instead of just presenting the data.
Not to say that any harm to your health should be avoided, but by auto industry standards (other than Tesla) to this day serious incidents involve losing limbs or death. I know they're pushing everyone at Tesla as the company is still losing a lot amount of money, but it's not clear that anyone being pushed is taking really serious risks -- at other auto companies, they are and the result is literally loss of limb and life. Moreover their loss is for "greedy capitalists" as the workers earn very little, have incentives to take risks, are not trained appropriately, and traditional car companies are quite profitable unlike Tesla.
The photos in the recent Businessweek coverage of auto industry safety of people missing limbs are horrible (Tesla was not mentioned therein btw).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/inside-al...
Just an interesting thing.
Comparing the safety history of a company that has produced fewer than 200,000 vehicles ever to companies that produce many multiples of that, annually, and have been in operation for over a hundred years is ridiculous.
Man, if you can brand yourself a "tech company" the Silicon Valley technorati will apologize for anything.
1- "worse than slaughterhouses and sawmills" is more catchy than "better than X" (chose any X automaker) 2- Is the safety level of a slaughterhouses or a sawmill comparable to a car's ? They are things not in the same category, with different sophistication level and different purpose, how many times a day an average person will enter a slaughterhouse or a sawmill ?
Have you ever entered a sawmill? Don't get me started.
So, if Tesla is a higher injury place than a sawmill, somebody shoduld send inspections and audit the place thoroughly.
It would make more sense to compare to the most simmilar companies.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
It's analagous to saying "Elon Musk's mouth has worse bacterial contamination than petri dish of Lyme Disease." Sure, by number of bacterial agents, Musk's mouth is more contaminated... But that's not a very useful statement unless you want to mislead people.
Machinery doesn't kill people every day at Tesla nor at sawmills but considering the differences between the workplaces it's impressive that the number of little injuries at an auto manufacturer adds up to the number of little injuries in a sawmill.
All: let's please have a more substantive discussion now. It's amazing how sensitive these threads are to hot coals in the title.
Compare that with the slaughterhouse industry:
"In recent years, the industry has bragged about dramatic reductions in worker injuries. What they’ve failed to report is that the OSHA injury form was recently re-written to omit the category of repetitive stress injuries – the most commonly reported injury in the industry."
http://www.foodispower.org/slaughterhouse-workers/
So, Tesla is being compared on reported injury rates to slaughterhouses, whose standards have been re-written to exclude reporting the most common types of injuries, which just-so-happen to be the types Tesla is reporting?
(Note that the quote above comes from a pro-vegan site, so it isn't unbiased).
NPR similarly describes widespread under-reporting of injuries in the meat processing industry: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/25/479509221/we-...
I'm inclined to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt here, though we should not minimize the effects of repetitive stress disorders.
> we now have the lowest injury rate in the industry by far
This article seems to be misleading readers into thinking that Tesla has unsafe working conditions, despite being the best in the industry.
Without the 31% higher, you'd expect a 50-50 chance of being above or below the average. 31% higher sounds like its might be statistically significant. You'd need other numbers to be sure - e.g. if there are only 1.53 incidents on average, then Tesla might be the unlucky factory that had 2 incidents instead of 1.
Who cares? The very definition of "industry average" means that someone in the industry will be above or below the average. Why would I want to read about that? Why pick on Tesla? because they're popular?
To answer your last question, because two weeks ago Tesla said the opposite: https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car-factory-i...
People seem to think it matters when they claim Tesla is "above average" in autonomous driving capability, or automated car manufacturing.
But yeah, "who cares" about people getting hurt in blue-collar industries, am I right?